Chapter 19
Chapter nineteen
Rory,
It’s the eve of Imbolc, and you know what that means.
It’s our birthday tomorrow, Ror.
Tomorrow. The word is haunting me this evening, as it creeps in all around me, with only the turf-fire and my thoughts for company.
Tomorrow. It’s a living thing, tomorrow, watching me from the lengthening shadows of today, waiting for the rise of the moon and the screech of the owl to creep closer, ready to be born.
Tomorrow, we will be five-and-twenty, Ror, a quarter of a century lived, and too much of it apart. Tomorrow, we are five-and-twenty, and tomorrow – tomorrow I go to war.
It’s a scary sentence, that. The first time that I’ve ever penned it.
The first time that I’ve ever even thought it, lived it, faced the bitter-tasting truth of it.
Our father was a warrior, and our grandfather before him.
It shouldn’t be so terrifying. We hail from a long line of bloodstained hands, fierce and unflinching in the face of battle.
How many days of our too-brief childhood did we spend preparing for this inevitability, crossing swords in the courtyard of our father’s castle, studying strategies and absorbing the horrors of war through the shriveled ink on the pages of countless scrolls, penned by long-dead hands.
I should be ready, fearless and unblinking as all my ancestors before me, but the truth of it is – a truth I can only admit it to you, Rory, here under cover of night, alone in my tent save for the dim light of a half-burnt candle, a young and fearful king – the truth of it is that I am afraid.
I never thought that I would ride to war without you.
But I am glad, as well – glad that you are not here, that you will not have to see the terrors that I am about to bear witness to, the horrors which I myself will have to commit, the unmitigated senselessness of tragedy and death of which I have only heretofore read on the page, imagined in my mind, shuddering at the thought of it.
I am glad that one of us, at least, will be spared having to endure seeing the stuff of nightmares coming to life all around us in the heat of battle.
Real nightmares, not the one I accused you of being.
More than anything, I am the most sorry for that, Ror. I hope that you know, in that way you have, that it was not at all true. I certainly do.
You have not written back to me in such a long time.
It seems impossible that once hardly a day ever passed without me seeing your familiar scrawl on a torn sheaf of parchment, arriving on the gray-feathered wings of our kestrels or slipped into my pocket as you passed me in the corridor.
I miss it, the poetry of your unspoken words, even more than I miss the sound of your voice or the jab of your fist against my shoulder or the too-rare echo of your laughter down our father’s halls.
I miss you, Ror.
I don’t know where you are now, but I hope that it is somewhere warm and beautiful, that there is music and firelight and rich red wine – gods, I hope at least one of us is having wine tonight – and that you are happy, and content, and at peace.
I hope that you think of me, every now and then, not with resentment and anger and betrayal, as you did the last time that I saw you, but with fondness, with affection, as I do you.
I love you, Ror. I hope that when all this is over, you can again come home.
Your brother,
Niall