Death of a Warrior

“Are you there, God? It’s me… sorry for the mess.” Michael’s folded hands trembled. “I-I can’t seem to let go of it. Even here, I can’t.” He croaked, the tears burning the infected cuts on his cheeks as they slid down into his unkempt beard. “I’m trying, God. I’m trying so hard, but I can’t. I can’t… I thought I was made for this. I thought that’s why you sent them to me. Why I had those dreams. Why you gave me this strength. But I was wrong. I was so wrong.” Michael’s chest shuttered before he cried out—

“Why!” His voice cracked like a whip through the still air, shattering the silence of the sanctuary.

“Why did you let them die! Why did you let me go there! Why didn’t you stop me! Why didn’t you send a sign! Why! Why! Why!” The man of nearly 34 years shrieked like a child. The tiles at his feet splintering like glass as he bore his entire weight onto his blade. “Why didn’t you let me save at least one of them!” The tears flowed again, collecting blood, mud, pus, and sweat in spoiled streams of muck that pulled at the hairs guarding his dry and cracked lips. “At least Maria…”

The image of a young woman, barely 20, fluttered to the front of his mind. Black, uncombed hair tied in crisp tulle hadn’t made her smile any less beautiful, nor had the callouses on her sun-kissed hands from years of labor any less welcoming. Michael had even found her rude habit of lifting up her quilted smock to show off the rose-like birthmark on her ankle charming. Yet that outstretched arm that had once eased the soldier’s pain with a simple brush of her fingers against his own, now lay separated from her kind black eyes, ripped away along with the generous soul that used to shine so brightly through them. Michael would never admit to having loved her, but when he returned to the scorched valley that had once been her village, and found her ashen rose in a pile of bodies, adjacent to a plain of skewered skulls, a blind rage possessed him. For he had not loved her as a man loves a woman, but as a father loves a child. In the ensuing battle, he blanketed the field with twice as many corpses as the enemy had left. He hadn’t realized how much he cared for her, for the meals she’d bring him on his journeys to and from the various battlefields, for the laughter she shared with him in such times of darkness, till he found her forever scream of terror choking on a splintered stake, and her naked thighs dried with the remains of violence.

“Why…” Michael exhaled in a whisper. “Why me? Why did you give me this task?” He tightened his grip around the hilt of his blood rusted sword. “Did you even give me this task?”

Michael looked up to the cross above the altar and waited for an answer.

Closing his eyes, he pretended his vice-clamp on his partner in death was no different than a pair of folded hands, and he prayed.

“Maria once told me that you don’t give us anything we can’t handle… That used to keep me going. The thought that you put me in a position to lead others, to protect the innocent, to fight in your name, because you knew I could handle it, even when I didn’t think I could. Even when it broke me apart each time I felt my blade slicing through my enemies’ flesh, or each time I saw your spark of divinity leave their eyes, I thought that I could keep going, because you were the one who gave me this mission, who set me on this path, who trusted that I could handle it. But I can’t… I can’t anymore… and I’m afraid to ask,” Michael paused. “was this truly your will? Was this path of death and misery meant for me? Or did man elect me to this position in error, and I, not living the life you intended for me, failed, and thus bore so heavy a cost?”

A warm light brushed against Michael’s forehead. The sky outside had shifted to cast a ray of sun through the stained-glass onto him.

“What’s this even mean?” The rotted pew creaked as he leaned back and out of the sun beam’s reach. “Does it mean anything?” He turned from the altar to search the colorful panes for an answer. Not finding one, his eyes fell to the mural below it of Christ’s second fall. “Did you also feel like a failure?” He asked the broken figure. “Like God chose wrong? Like all the lives lost in your name were your fault, and you wish God had just chosen someone else!” He was screaming again, but his fury left him quicker this time, as he turned his head back up to the cross above the altar.

“I guess that’s my arrogance though.” He stood. His metal plate cutting against the pew as he shuffled into the center aisle, his sword leaving behind a number of sizable cracks and broken stone from when he’d leaned on it earlier. “Because no other man could have done it. His life wouldn’t have been worth the world.”

Using his sword as a crutch, Michael hobbled towards the front of the chapel. A trail of dark red mixed with mud followed him. It led back to the pew he’d been sitting in, where a puddle of blood had pooled and splattered with all his thrashing screams. This pattern of muddy boot prints and chipped tile snaked all the way to the nave’s entrance, through the vestibule, and out the great wooden doors he’d left ajar.

Upon reaching the sanctuary steps, Michael stopped.

“I know it can’t compare… but…” He fell to his knees. The deafening ring of steel smashing against stone reverberated throughout the church. “did my life mean anything? Did I play my part well? Were all my failures also a part of your greater plan? Or were they just a consequence of the curse we brought upon ourselves in sin?”

Michael stared at the lamb painted on the marble coffin, and waited for an answer.

The beam of light returned. This time, the warmth touched his back. After sitting in cold armor on an un-cushioned slab of wood for an hour, it felt as if someone had thrown a light blanket over him.

“So, can I rest now?” Michael felt his body rocking back and forth, slowly leaning closer and closer to the ground. The thunking of his chest-plate against the stairs was not as loud as when he’d knelt, since he’d eased his body into them this time, instead of letting himself collapse.

“I know I can’t go to where Maria is,” he whispered, his cheek pressed against the stone, and sword still gripped between folded purpling fingers. “but I hope to see her before I’m sent down. It’d be nice to meet my Mother as well. I have to tell her Father is fine, Julie is looking after him. She got married too. Was her husband also conscripted after I left? I don’t know. I haven’t been back in so many years. How old is my nephew? Was my niece born healthy?” Michael closed his eyes. “I wish I had had the chance to have children. To find love. But God doesn’t give all things evenly, do you?”

Michael waited for an answer.

The chapel was silent.

“Okay.” He breathed out. “I’ll just lay here then. Sorry again for the mess…”

Michael closed his eyes.

His body ached. His heart felt heavy. Yet this is what he wanted. Finally, he no longer had to fight.

“It’s warm.” Michael thought. His eyes still closed, he imagined what his body would look like to whomever found it. How long would it take? Would his flesh be fresh, rotted, or picked clean by maggots? And who would find it? Would it be friend or foe? Michael knew his people had gained the advantage, and that the enemy had begun to retreat, but the war was far from over. Would his corpse be desecrated? Or buried in a mass grave? The kindest gesture on a battlefield where most corpses are left to be eaten by beasts. After years spent in wastelands of death, Michael no longer dreamed of having a headstone above his bones.

The answer came sooner than he expected, as he was still alive when he heard a high voice call out, “Captain Forden!”

It was Rookie, properly named Roswald Spinner, a runner boy who delivered messages from the commanding generals to the frontline. “Captain Forden, are you in here? I heard you were headed this way. Is it true that you—Oh my God!”

Rookie saw the mess Michael had left. His boots slid and slapped against the spoiled church floor until he reached Michael. “Captain Forden!” Rookie bent down to try and help. “Shit, this is bad. God, there’s so much blood.”

Still only 14, Rookie didn’t have the strength to lift the grown and fully dawned knight, but he was able to turn him onto his back, so that Michael was looking up into the freckled youth’s face. Behind Rookie’s auburn curls hung the cross. Michael had been staring at it for over an hour, but from this angle, it looked completely different. It was like a great spear dangling above, ready to fall and crush his head at any moment.

“Hang in there, Captain Forden! Hang in there! I’ll get you some help! Just stay awake! Stay awake until I get back! You got it?” Rookie rose to leave, when, for the first time since he’d left the battleground, Michael let go of his sword.

He snatched Rookie’s pant leg. The clattering of steel again reached up to bounce off the ceiling and echo off the limestone walls. “Stay.” Michael wheezed between haggard breaths. “I intended to die alone, but you spoiled it, kid. Take some responsibility.”

“Captain…” Rookie’s green eyes burned as he held back tears. “I-I’m real quick. And I saw some of our guys nearby on my way here. I’ll go get them. They’ll know what to do and can get you some help.”

“No.” Michael rolled his head from side to side. “Don’t go.”

“B-but you, and we…” Rookie searched for the right words. “Captain, we only won because of you. You cut off the head of the enemy general yourself. Everyone knows we wouldn’t have killed nearly half those bastards if it weren’t for you. So you can’t die here! Please! Let go so I can get you some help. Please!”

“Rookie I…” Michael stopped. The desperation in Rookie’s eyes had struck him, and Michael wondered what was worse, letting the kid go and having him regret for the rest of his life that he failed to save an already dying man, or having him stay to see the life leave the body of a man he admired, stealing away whatever innocence was left in him.

“Okay.” Michael conceded. “Go on, kid.”

Rookie smiled weakly, before nodding, and taking off in a sprint. He was already shouting for help before he’d left the nave. “I found him! In here! Help! I found Captain Forden!” Whoever he was shouting to must have been far off, as Rookie kept running till his voice faded out of Michael’s earshot.

Alone, and with his view now unobstructed, Michael stared up at the instrument of torture and salvation. It was pointing down at him, like an accusatory finger, as he lay bleeding out at the foot of the lamb.

“This is fine.” Michael thought. “I hadn’t realized that I didn’t want to die alone until now, but I couldn’t let Rookie stay. I wouldn’t want my last act to be a selfish one.” He closed his eyes for the third time. “Let me at least do this one good thing.”

Michael hadn’t heard the door creak open, nor the footsteps approach, but he just assumed he must have been too weak, since he was positive there was someone leaning over him now.

“Are you there, Rookie?” He opened his eyes.

He was no longer looking up, his head had been too heavy and had fallen to the side. Still, he didn’t expect to find a pair of naked feet so close to his face. Scarred and bloodied, these feet looked as if they’d run through a battlefield barefoot.

“I’m here.” A voice with no breath answered.

Michael cried.

“It was worth it.”