Yay for original fiction!
I hope you'll like it. It's fairly dark stuff.
WHEN THE CASTLE FELL
by Rurouni Triv
When the castle fell, it was the koi pond that spoke to her most poignantly of how desperate the siege had been. She remembered, from her one visit here as a young warrior, the huge, beautiful fish that had lived in this pond, inhumanly graceful and so trusting that they would swim up to the edge of the pond to be petted. She had been amazed when the young lord she had been assigned to protect had knelt down and brushed his fingers against the very surface of the water, and the fish had risen up to meet his hands in a piscean caress. Each one of them, he told her, had its own name and lineage, some of them - he had joked - more exalted than his own.
Now, the pond was nothing more than a pit in the center of an untended sand garden, full of mud and all but empty. Nothing was left of the centuries-old carp, once the pride of the castle’s lord, and the lack of fires and bones near the pond - and the green scum on top of what water was left - was enough to tell her that they had been gone for some time. The lord himself had probably eaten them when the fresh food had run out… and given the affection she’d seen in his eyes all those years ago, probably wept as he did so.
Later, of course, he’d probably have looked back on those meals with fondness. By that time, even he had been reduced to eating rats and weeds with the rest of his retainers, even the household pets long gone by that point. When they’d found his body, gutted and beheaded in the castle’s shrine as befitted a proper lord who had been defeated and accompanied by his family and retainers, he had been little more than skin and bones. They all had been, even the tiny baby who had been smothered by his mother rather than suffer the indignity of being raised by the enemy - or casually killed by them.
She shuddered lightly, nothing more than a shiver down her spine, at the memory of that find. War made people do some unspeakable things, and even she, with all her years of training and experience, hadn’t completely lost that sense of horror when she saw it. She could all too easily remember the desperate love she’d felt for her own lost little ones, how she would have given anything to protect them. To kill your child yourself - even in as desperate a condition as this - spoke of a level of despair that would see death as better than the pain that would come of living. She remembered that despair, remembered feeling the warmth of a little body, the rapid beat of a child’s pulse against her knife as she decided whether to end his life. She remembered other women who had gone through with it.
She had been lucky. She had been stopped, an arrow through the shoulder that had made her drop the knife. Her son had lived to grow up, although his body lay now on a battlefield somewhere to the west. His sisters had the chance to be born, though they had died far too young. And she was here, standing next to her husband and commander, contemplating how fortunate she’d been to live to see this day, when at long last the man who had started this bloody war fell, and when she could thank the man who had stopped her attempt at infanticide for leading her - leading them all - to justice.
WHEN THE CASTLE FELL
by Rurouni Triv
When the castle fell, it was the koi pond that spoke to her most poignantly of how desperate the siege had been. She remembered, from her one visit here as a young warrior, the huge, beautiful fish that had lived in this pond, inhumanly graceful and so trusting that they would swim up to the edge of the pond to be petted. She had been amazed when the young lord she had been assigned to protect had knelt down and brushed his fingers against the very surface of the water, and the fish had risen up to meet his hands in a piscean caress. Each one of them, he told her, had its own name and lineage, some of them - he had joked - more exalted than his own.
Now, the pond was nothing more than a pit in the center of an untended sand garden, full of mud and all but empty. Nothing was left of the centuries-old carp, once the pride of the castle’s lord, and the lack of fires and bones near the pond - and the green scum on top of what water was left - was enough to tell her that they had been gone for some time. The lord himself had probably eaten them when the fresh food had run out… and given the affection she’d seen in his eyes all those years ago, probably wept as he did so.
Later, of course, he’d probably have looked back on those meals with fondness. By that time, even he had been reduced to eating rats and weeds with the rest of his retainers, even the household pets long gone by that point. When they’d found his body, gutted and beheaded in the castle’s shrine as befitted a proper lord who had been defeated and accompanied by his family and retainers, he had been little more than skin and bones. They all had been, even the tiny baby who had been smothered by his mother rather than suffer the indignity of being raised by the enemy - or casually killed by them.
She shuddered lightly, nothing more than a shiver down her spine, at the memory of that find. War made people do some unspeakable things, and even she, with all her years of training and experience, hadn’t completely lost that sense of horror when she saw it. She could all too easily remember the desperate love she’d felt for her own lost little ones, how she would have given anything to protect them. To kill your child yourself - even in as desperate a condition as this - spoke of a level of despair that would see death as better than the pain that would come of living. She remembered that despair, remembered feeling the warmth of a little body, the rapid beat of a child’s pulse against her knife as she decided whether to end his life. She remembered other women who had gone through with it.
She had been lucky. She had been stopped, an arrow through the shoulder that had made her drop the knife. Her son had lived to grow up, although his body lay now on a battlefield somewhere to the west. His sisters had the chance to be born, though they had died far too young. And she was here, standing next to her husband and commander, contemplating how fortunate she’d been to live to see this day, when at long last the man who had started this bloody war fell, and when she could thank the man who had stopped her attempt at infanticide for leading her - leading them all - to justice.