Lysis

I awoke to the sounds of an army coming to life.  The sun had not yet risen, but the air was already heavy with the promise of heat.  All around me, soldiers and servants stirred, commanders barked, horses neighed.  I felt as if my entire body had been subjected to repeated beatings.  Bruised and battered as I was, however, I could still feel the uneven indentations the rocky bed had ground into my back. 

 

I moaned and sat up against the thick wooden post, prying open my unhappy eyes and dragging the shackles across my lap.  Looking down, I noticed gashes and rents in my tunic, and splotches of blood across my chest.  Mine?  Someone else's? I supposed I had been in too much shock to have taken notice the day before.  But clarity was returning as the morning's pallid light presaged the dawn.

 

I remembered the night before, the haughty face of the Spartan traitor, his sharp questions, my own tart retorts.  I remembered also my last moments on Winds;  the surprised look on the face of Hippocrotes when the axe felled him;  his strange, final words.  They made no sense to me and perhaps never would.  It was enough that he was gone.  I felt the black wind of despair shred my heart.

 

Now, here I was.  The last of my ship.  Separated, detached- but not yet dead and buried.  I wondered what the new day would hold in store for me, even as the barbarians started their morning fires, conversed in their accursed tongues, and perhaps wondered the same thing.  The answer was not long in coming.