The Cost of Mercy

I still remember those scenes vividly. Or perhaps not. I can see them, but I wonder if the truth is tainted. Memories decay with time and are often poorly reconstructed. Moreover, I wonder if those still seemingly fresh images are painted a darker shade with hindsight. 

It was night. The dancing flames of the smoldering camp were dying, flickering out like the shortened lives of the stragglers. I was well beyond the bands of the makeshift camp, and my force had thinned in pursuit of the scattered enemy. After breaking, They ran with the utmost desperation or hid under the cover of darkness. We found many, but only I found him. Had the moon been dark that night, or had he dropped the glimmering blade, I wouldn’t have seen him. Why hadn't he dropped it? It’s apparent to me now, but at the time, the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.

A boy with a tall bloodied sword. He was old enough to be a man, but barely. Perhaps a year older than. . . my son was. The weapon was swaying in his amateurish grip like a reed in the wind. Had he shed the blood? Or had the blade been procured from one of the dead? I wagered with myself the latter. I didn’t believe he had the eyes of a killer. Sorrow, pain, and hate marred his muddy face, but I didn’t see a murderer. In the place of the boy with the bloodied sword, I saw my son. A young man who might have had a doting mother, a future full of possibilities, and a prosperous life if only I gave him the chance.

He and the group to which he belonged were enemies of the empire. They were virtual bandits and cutthroats, guilty of attempting to incite rebellion. They had fought and killed a number of my soldiers before their retreat. Even unarmed and submissive, the Legion's procedure demanded his interrogation and subsequent death. 

My wife never told me how much a fool I could be. My countrymen told me I was lucky, and I agreed with them wholeheartedly. How the fates brought us together is beyond me. Her words were always news, affection, or praise, and they impacted me greatly. She said I was kind, so I became charitable. She said I was honorable, so I became honest. She told me I was a good man.

The boy stared at me, tightly gripping the deadly weapon, but not daring to make a move. He was smart. He knew he didn’t stand a chance. I stood only feet away, my red uniform dyed deeper with blood. I stood at that moment with his fate in my hands.

Would a good man strike down a boy? A man, barely old enough to be recognized as such? Would a good man condemn him to death?

I thought not.

From the grand perspective of the empire, it was nothing. One of forty strong. Together at their best, they had been only a minor nuisance. Had they not spread the unrealistic notion of insurrection, they might have gone unattended for many months more. Even in my career, it was an inconsequential act. I passed the speechless boy in the mud. Our force regrouped, and I directed our march towards the next objective. That was that. 

I returned home thinking myself a good man. I had spared a life.

In the following years, I further pursued my career. I cherished my wife, and I watched my son grow. I was promoted. Once, then twice, then thrice. My son took after me and his mother in the best ways. He was strong, keen, and even kind. He wanted to join the Legion, so I taught him to fight. He soon excelled in his career and even found a wife almost as brilliant and beautiful as his mother. In a way, he was the product of my life. The culmination of the very best of me. 

He was so much. So very much, and I killed him.

As my personal interests prospered, the empire as a whole encountered trials. In a decade and a half, that foreign slimy word rebellion stained the newly acquired territories. Trouble on our borders thinned the indomitable legions. It was almost as though the empire was a sheet of snow, and it had begun to rain.

Even as the empire still expanded, I waged war on her holes. Most of them were relative pinpricks, some the size of stones. I patched them. Then, there came a leader. He was an unusually charismatic figurehead for the degenerated of the malleable populace to rally behind. They took to him like flies to manure. 

It was on a cold wet morning that I lost everything. A line of six hundred men. Ten carts, and two small carriages in a relatively narrow file. We were on a low mountain pass, on an expedited route between the city and the main body under my command. In a rare twisted turn of fate, it was a duty in common for my son and a waypoint for my wife. She rode a carriage. He brought up the flank.

A rabble at least a thousand strong. Storming from the steep forested incline like an avalanche of tumbling stones, they wore animal skins and layered cloth. They howled with the charge like feral dogs and fought in the same manner. A soldier was summarily torn apart by three wolves with axes. He was the first to die. The rest of the horde rammed our parchment-thin wall, and the short battle progressed predictably. 

I should have died that day. They should have killed me. The carriage with my wife was overturned. Her body was pulled from the wreckage. I never saw my son. He was a rank above the soldier torn to shreds, but the animals didn’t discriminate for any rank below my own. I was pulled from my horse in the third quarter of the engagement and bound. 

Once the last blood had been spilled, Their leader came to me. His airs of superiority vanished when we came face to face. They were siphoned off and replaced by something much older. He asked me if I remembered a night when the moon was halved, the tents were ash, and the ground was mud. I didn’t know what he meant until I looked into his eyes. The realization constricted my heart and viced my lungs. 

I asked if he was the boy.

In response, he cut my bonds to the protest of the nipping wolves, turned me towards the forest, and said that his debt was now repaid.