To Have and to Hold

Seven years, four months, and twenty-one days I have waited for this moment. A day away from my eighteenth birthday, tomorrow, my mother would learn of her eldest son’s death. For now, I must bear this burden alone. I must watch this death somberly. I had held my broken father as he died, but I could not bear to hold my broken mother, nor would I hold her now. It has been near four years since that child had watched his father die. The smell of blood was over-powering; the taste of death lingered. I saw the past in my nightmares, and I still am haunted by the screams piercing throughout the plains, but I never felt anything. There was no time to mourn for my father, he had found release, my brothers-in-arms and I were the unfortunate ones. That experience changed me. I had been serving the crown for three years, the battle field was my home, but that had been my first experience of true loss.

The first time I killed a man, I felt defiled. I had lost my innocence as a mere child of eleven years of age. Since that day, I have killed thousands, slaughtered hundreds, and worn through three weapons. One of those weapons was a battle-axe, but that only lasted through one battle before I left it lodged in one of my trophies. Of those I killed, nine were women, five were children, three were priests, and one was a wolf that had entered our camp at night. One of the women was clinging tightly to an infant. She was nursing when I led the raid on her village. I fell both her and the child in one strike. That body was where I left my axe. My men scavenged what food and spoils they could gather, while I accounted for our losses. My captain joked that two lives, one strike, would help my average, but I did not find the same joy in warfare that he did.

I just killed. I accepted that I was a murderer. My mother knows not of my sins, nor will she ever. I will take my demons to the grave. We lost fourteen men on that raid and forty-nine the prior day. I never counted myself amongst the fallen, but I had lost myself long ago. My father called me a protégé from my childhood. I served my first campaign for the crown, under my father, at the age of ten years. I served two campaigns under him, and have led three since his death. I had never led a pre-emptive strike, but I was relentless in my retaliations. I longed for peace, and killed many in my quest for it, but I lost myself in my passion. My purpose was lost amongst, and replaced with, blind drive. However, this campaign is my last. My mother has lost her husband to this sickness and now her eldest child. Because of me, my sins, I will never be able to tell my mother I’m sorry.

This final campaign was our greatest victory and my gravest loss. Once upon a time, I was destined for greatness, but I was so set on what I thought I was that I let wisdom pass me by. I would never be the sung warrior my father was; the puppeteer would never honor me. We stood on our field of victory, champions, warriors, and murderers.
My adviser knelt. He rarely killed, only when he was forced to. He was the last of the Paladin, consultant to the crown, and often reminded me of the great man that my father was. My best-friend, Vladimir. The Grey-Knight knelt; he prayed for me often, and that is when it happened.

He had convinced me to let one man live, reminded me of my father’s compassion. He never slaughtered the stricken. I heard the groans of that fallen man and with my friend’s back turned, I turned my attention to the fallen. In an instant, a blur, the one that I had compassion towards struck me down. I now lay on my own sword. I will die a feigned warrior to my mother, a disappointment to my father’s dream for me, an insignificant bastard to the world, and my crown, my father’s crown, would be taken up by the Grey-Knight named Vladimir.