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Join Date: Dec 1999 Location: Grand Rapids, MI, USA
Posts: 2,993
| The Return of Lochinvar
It was living, not dying, that bothered him.
He kicked his feet from the stirrups and stretched out his legs, knuckling the kinks in his back. He considered dismounting, but was disinclined. He had far to go yet, and night was coming on, drifting thinly across the sky like the smoke of seasoned firewood.
The thought of a soft bed, and maybe a bath, also argued against stopping. The mingled scent of rancid oil, slightly rusty mail, old leather, horse, and sweat surrounded him; old smells, familiar to any man who’d ever campaigned. Still, he wouldn’t mind not stinking for a while.
He glanced at the fox, thinking again how delighted Ellen would have been, then shying from the thought.
He was no stranger to death. He had seen it on half a hundred fields, often as not conjured by his own hand. He had struck men down, trampled them. He had held men as the darkness fell, companions of desperate adventures, riotous frolics; he had watched them struggle for a last breath, and he had cursed, and wept, and buried them. Death, he knew.
It had not prepared him. Death had ambushed him with Ellen’s slow, quiet, passing, the stoic courage, her temper sweet to the end, the weak smile when she looked at him, her skin pale as new parchment. These had stoked his pain, banked his despair to a level he had not imagined.
The thought of his dead wife made his hand stray to the twining braid of hair circling his weathered wrist, soft as a child’s whisper, black as the empty years he foresaw whenever he lifted his eyes beyond the morrow. He had clipped it from her long locks during that terrible time, watching her eyes fade from the blue of summer skies to the leaden gray of winter seas.
Crushed beneath that terrible impotence, unable to breathe for the weight of it, he had wanted to clutch her to him, to somehow drag her physically back into the world of life, and warmth, and love. Instead, he had only grasped her hand gently, fearing to add pain to a crucible already brimming.
The babe had not survived, either. His daughter. His first. That had seemed to him like a gratuitous kick after a thorough bludgeoning. He imagined Death laughing.
The gelding stamped impatiently and shook his head, jingling the bridle rings. He’d had enough of this standing about, and wanted to move. He was a big horse, deep-chested and long-boned, built for long treks in rough terrain, with a shaggy chestnut coat and a few scars, but good-tempered for all of that, and stout-hearted as an oak. This was the same mount that had brought him from the West when he first came for Ellen, those few short but oh-so-long years ago.
He remembered that night, the wild ride that had taken them from Netherby Hall and her father’s men and her unwanted husband-to-be, the mad careen across Cannobie Lee, with half the countryside vainly in pursuit, her holding tight and laughing aloud from the sheer audacity and excitement of it all. He had been young, then, and strong, and sure. He had taken service with a laird, and set up a small holding, and defended it against bandits and overly-covetous neighbors, and built it into a home for the two of them. Then she had left him, all unwilling, but powerless to stay.
Now, he was going back to the West--older, not so strong, nor so sure, with face and spirit worn and lined, and not just by years. Something within him had broken, been severed, but he was unsure just what, and couldn’t begin to think whether it would ever heal. He felt hollow, when he felt at all. He knew he was supposed to continue living, but was uncertain just how to proceed with that, or why.
He kneed the chestnut into motion again, thinking about his old friend, Arcon. Even in his small holding, he had heard the rumors. A king, Arcon was, now, so they said; who would have thought it? And Zelda, a queen? It was wonderful to hear, though hardly credible, and he was suddenly taken with a thought to go see them both, and learn what truth lay behind the fantastic tale. And once he had thought of it, he thought also of his old friends, Edward the Fat, Lady Moon, Sir Gavin, and the rest, and was seized with a desire to see what had happened in their lives.
In any event, it was as good a reason as any to leave a place where he was disinclined to stay. He sold his estate, and now carried his world in his pack, and on his hip.
Ignoring his own protesting thighs, he kicked the gelding into a trot, moving forward through the thickening twilight.
[ 08-30-2001: Message edited by: lochinvar ]
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