We Follow Our Fathers
My father was a solider for my whole life, for his whole life to hear him tell it. What I remember of him most, is the joy that accompanied seeing him match up the road to our house after having been away so long, only to be followed by the guilt of wishing him back down it once the days wore on.
There was no peace when my father was home. He was not a violent men, nor rude, but he had his own plans for his son’s future, ones my mother did not share.
“The boy’s too weak. You haven’t been making him practice, have you?”
“He practices, toward an honest trade, not swinging a toy around, pretending he’s off gallivanting while his family is home sick and poor.”
My mother should never have been a soldier’s wife.I never heard the story of their engagement, but by the time there were three of us kids at home, no power in the universe would have seen her make a soldier of any. Instead, I learned to work leather, and the training axe my father had given me chopped down trees instead of enemies.
Toward the end, when I’d moved out with a wife of my own, my father’s visits became less and less, until they finally stopped. I think we were all secretly relieved when the messenger bore home his armour and the news of his death in the fields. Though we all share that weight, I have never found it easy to carry. It seems a tragic thing, to find a kind of freedom in the death of your father.
The war he died in was declared over, as had been the one before, and everyone set about rebuilding the world it had nearly destroyed. My wife and I moved to Stormwind, where I could open a shop and we could raise our two children. Though I travelled to sell my wares, it was nothing like the long absence of the King’s army. Though the roads were not altogether safe, my family never really feared for my safety while I was on them. All the monsters of our past, the Horde, the Legion, even the undead that had taken over Lordaeron, it all seemed so distant, almost storybook tales.
Until the necropolis appeared over the city, and the plague came to our streets.
I’d always thought my father served because he enjoyed it. At the worst times, I even believed my mother’s bitter ranting that he did so to escape the responsibilities he left at home. As I gathered up the pieces of his armour that she had not yet pawned, I wondered if he had instead looked into the dangers of the world and felt the need to face them in the hopes his children would never have to. As I did now.
Sympathizing with my father was even less comfortable than the weight of his armour. I stood, trying not to shake enough to send the metal rattling, as the icebreaker left the docks of Stormwind, and took us to the north.