The Obedient Die

It is not my place to question princes. My blade sups at the throats of his enemies. What use my own? I walk, tall. My chest cleaves the air and the men stand stricken with rage and freedom.

Upon the wicked and the cruel they say my duty is to trample. I see them. The bulging eyes asking why over and over, clinging to life as long as life allows. My cape is crimson. Not the color of blood

but something deeper. With the authority of gods come down to dine upon the souls of those who would question. My feet stride wide. The clanks and shudders of metal. The shaking,

the shaking. We men march. We march long. To where, we need not know until we know. Why, we never need ask. Freedom is for others to indulge and thus to amble unharried by duty,

but steeped in deep foreboding. The mass, the mass, it moves and rumbles like some ancient wind grown up from tradition and hearty clouds clinging like corpses to a sky that neither loves nor hates.

And then I stand tall. And then I am not shaken by the heedless winds. And when I see them, perched on a hillside ordered by some other prince to strike, my purpose is clear. No mysteries

reside nestled deep in the heart. Instead, in that instant, for that time, in that place, in such epochs and in such eons, my debts are clear and all there is stands right there in front of me. The terrible

and cloudless now. I am the first to move forward with war cry summoned from certainty of purpose. I stand over him and see him question, to ask why again and again like pitiful cur

being struck for who knows why. In that moment, choking and grasping at air and bloodied capes, suddenly the clarity leaves. I see it rise above him the steam of the dewy and still forgiving dawn.

It soaks the earth, the certainty. It sits and whimpers. We move about with spears to spare the last man his hunger and his doubts. At that moment, I see him look up at me. I see him suddenly 

apprehend that what is done is born of duty and obedience, and so he obeys and dies.