He looks back into the smouldering remains of the church and the dozen souls lying battered, broken, and scared. Each one of them has given everything to this place. He peers over the rubble at the dawn and the vast forces arrayed against them, hiding within its resplendent beams. If there was ever a time, now is it.
He pulls out the red mask and looks at it for a long while. The distant march of ten thousand soldiers rumbles in the ground, the echoes encroaching closer, while in what remains of the tree tops and roofs of the city, birds begin to sing.
‘Garin,’ he says. The boy looks up, one of his eyes closed shut by the wound on his brow. He’s the youngest of the lot, but in so many ways the oldest of them. ‘I have to go now. You will need to lead the others out of the city.’
The boy’s eye widens. ‘But Sir, we must defend the keep. It’s our duty to die in defence of the city. There are still people living here, we can’t abandon them.’
‘And you’ll lead them all away from here,’ he says. ‘They can’t come back here. Not for a long time. You’ll see to that, you’re a smart lad.’
He can see the conflict on Garin’s face. ‘But Sir, where are you going?’
He steps up onto the rubble. ‘That army won’t be satisfied by this city alone, Garin. They’ll keep coming, city after city, until they’ve broken what remains of these nations. I can’t save this place, but I can stop them.’
Confusion and fear mark Garin’s face.
‘But once I start,’ he says looking at the red mask once more, ‘I won’t be able to stop. And I won’t know friend from foe. So go on now, get away from here. And don’t come back. Not until you are sure I am long dead.’
War horns blare. They’re at the outskirts of the keep.
‘Sir…’
He smiles. ‘Good luck, Garin. Never come looking for this.’
He holds up the red mask, places it over his jaw, then begins to march down the rubble towards the fluttering banners of the vast army in the streets below them.
Paddy Dobson
21st March 2022