An Unrelated Story

“Draw!”

His vehement word echoed in the small antechamber with a resounding thunder.  The surrounding people were commanded into silence by the sheer ferocity that burned in the man’s eyes, the tormenting anger that coursed through his veins, spilling through his and, and flowing out through the tip of the sword which he held in his hands. The thick broadsword was almost too heavy for him, but he knew how to wield it well enough.  It balanced in the air in front of him, angled toward the ceiling, waiting patiently for a response from another surface of steel or flesh – it mattered not to the blade.

The man who opposed him stood, staring blankly back at him.  Arms at his sides, his eyes held a look of sadness which could bring angels to tears.  Gentle, sky blue orbs looked incredulously at the tip of the blade, no more than five inches away.  His own sword dangled at his side, supported loosely by a leather strap attached to his belt.  The scabbard was worn, shards of leather and pieces of thread hanging out in a chaotic cluster of work material.  Through those pieces could be seen the scars of many battles, the blood of many men, the cries of many victories, and the tears of many defeats.    

All of this reflected in the older man’s eyes as he looked toward the man whose mind cried for bloodshed.

“I will not draw, Cedric.”  His words were simple and definitive.  They required no explanation.  The guards who stood by the door looked nervous, stealing occasional glances back and forth.  The door was barred, locked from the outside.  There was no way out but by resolution to this conflict.  When one of the two men no longer breathed, the room would be unlocked.  Until then, time was much like the door itself – motionless.

The man called Cedric roared with anger.  He stepped forward and drove the point of his sword towards the other’s neck.  He stopped within inches, seeing if perhaps through a show of force he could entice his opponent to stand and face him.  It had no such effect.

“Coward!”  he cried, “will you not draw and face your responsibility?  Will you stand there and linger at the door of death?  Draw, Victor, and face me!  Draw!”  The words of Cedric now seemed as though they had been injected with a dose of madness, a madness that was dangerous, addicting, and precariously contagious.  Some individuals in the crowd licked their lips, their eyes not bothering to blink – the momentary blindness could cause them to miss the entire show.

Victor stood fast, still facing the fiery young man, trying to assess the situation in his head.   His face was pale, accenting the stubbles of his dark black beard.  A single, lonely gray hair was protruding from the base of his chin, pointing backwards, as if indicating the subject whom age was attacking.  He sighed heavily, taking his eyes off of Cedric for a moment.  Looking at the ground, his gaze fell upon tightly laced, worn leather boots.  If he only knew the roads these have traveled.  Would he be so compelled to solve all his problems with violence?

It seemed as though he was thus compelled.  Cedric was losing his patience rapidly, and his sword hands were tiring from holding it in such an offensive position.  He took his first withdrawing motion and brought the sword back to ready, but there were no other signs of retreat.  He would not stand down.  Not this time.  Not for this. 

“You ran, Victor.  You ran from your duties like a scared dog.  And it cost Leon his life!”  His voice quivered for only a split second in time at the mention of his companion’s name. 

The words had not left Cedric’s mouth before Victor’s head had snapped upward, looking straight on, this time with a look of disbelief hiding behind walls of sadness and tired exasperation. 

“Oh…” he brooded softly underneath his breath, “I no more ran then than I am running from you now.”  Pressing the palms of his hands on his forehead, he pushed hard and ran them through his hair, as if trying to force the ideas out of his head to put them in plain view.  “Don’t you see?  Don’t you see where all this bloodshed had led us?  Nowhere, my naïve friend.  Each bloody footprint we have left behind us has only reappeared as the next steep we take.  What we do…what we do is senseless.” 

“What we do is necessary!  It is profitable, charitable, and necessary!”  Cedric retorted, getting louder and more frantic with each word.  “Your meaningless ideas about reason and negotiation, those are senseless.  Leon is dead, Victor!  And it is because of the very same thing you are doing at this moment – because you refused to fight!”

Victor was shaking his head now, silently pleading with the conscience of his former ally.  Senseless.  He repeated the word in his head. 

“I could not have saved him even if I had fought.  He was far gone into the place you are going right now.  A place where the sword is the hand of justice, the purse is the great decision maker.  We are death-bringers, nothing more.  We can no longer—“

“Damn you, draw!  I’ll hear no more of this!  Talking as though Leon was responsible for his own death.”

“I will not draw against you, friend.” 

“Call me friend no more, coward!  I’ll accept no more trite, meaningless titles from you.”  Cedric advanced, his blade dangerously close to Victor’s shoulder, even though he was only holding it ready.  One move, and the strike would bring the willingly defenseless man to the netherworld.  “DRAW!”

Silence.  Cedric is lost.  He is as lost as Leon was.  Victor clenched his teeth, but showed no sign of anger.  He could not, nor would he, say anymore.

“I warn you one last time – draw or die!” 

No more swords, however, emerged from their scabbards that day.  They did, however, move in other ways.  A tremendous roar of anger erupted from Cedric’s diaphragm as the sword tip traced its way down until the sword was parallel to the ground, and dove forward like a snake making his final strike.  The tearing of flesh was audible over Cedric’s battle cry, followed by popping noises as Victor’s internal organs were punctured, their fluid accompanying the blood that was already soaking the floor underneath them both.

The small crowd looked on at the odd form of gladiatorial combat that was occurring before them at this very moment.  All of their eyes widened.  Some vomited.  Others wept.  One or two grinned.

Although pain had mixed with the already sad-stained expression on Victor’s gaunt face, it could not cover the despair he had in his heart.  The world around him swirled.  He looked down at the pieces of himself that were splattering on the cold cement floor below, and as blackness began to overcome his sight he looked back up, into the eyes of the feverish Cedric, whose mouth hung open, teeth bared, breathing as though he had just run a thousand miles. 

Victor let his body go limp.  There was no more reason for fighting now than there had been the day before. 

The last hiss of breath left his body through mouthed words without vocal chords.  Unable to hold on to consciousness any longer, Victor let the blackness envelop him for the last time.  Only one person in the room was able to hear exactly what he had said with his last ounce of strength.  Its effect, however, was apparent to all.

His lifeless body slumped to the floor, slowly sliding off the blade of the sword.  A grinding noise penetrated the ensuing silence following Victor’s last words, the sound of metal sliding against bone.  Within a few seconds, the body was on the floor, in a pool of its own blood.  It gave a final jump, the nerves dying out.  Then all was still, death’s mark punctuating its final sentence. 

His last words echoed in Cedric’s head.  Pounding from wall to wall inside his skull, they beat into him a sense of remorse, of guilt.  He stood there, paralyzed by the gravity of what had just occurred, and looking down into the rolled back, open eyes of his former friend, felt a sickening sense of responsibility.  His sword hung low, the blood groove flowing with dark red liquid.  At the tip, it dropped off on the floor, putting the finishing touches on the floor’s maroon coating of natural paint. 

A single drop of salt water hit the ground, making a soft slapping noise.  Cedric had shed a single, lonely tear. 

The silence was broken by the sound of metal on metal as the double wooden doors were unlocked.  The guards had given the signal to the two who were standing outside, and, upon being notified that the dispute had been reconciled, they had stripped the chains off the door.  The wooden gateway swung open, allowing the crowd a quick escape.  But none moved.  They all stood, staring agape at the swirling miasma of emotions that was flowing from the center of the room, the spectacle of the hour. 

The sound of the sword hitting the floor and the first of Cedric’s slow footsteps sang in unison as he spun on his heel and exited the room, never taking his eyes off the ground.  Behind him lay his dead companion, and the weapon that killed him.  Nobody moved to retrieve it.

 The next morning’s sun awoke to an emotionless, quiet room.  The east window allowed shreds of light to bounce off the cold stone floor, bring a slight glimmer to the walls.  It was open, a small breeze caressing the furniture, tossing the corners of the tussled sheets on the bed from side to side.  The space underneath the wooden door sucked in the draft. 

As the sun leaped over the horizon, finally flooding the room with light, a heavy wind pounded on the outside of the room.  The glass in the window rattled sharply, and the window was forced open almost fully.  Pieces of paper flew from the desk, cascading around the room in a kaleidoscope pattern.  They settled, the momentary din fading off into the dead acoustics of the room in an instant.  Another sound, however, echoed on, perpetuated by the sudden, forceful gust.

The creaking of the rafter above the bed beat rhythmically against the deaf ears of the world, like the ticking of an old, tired grandfather clock.  The old leather that rubbed against the wood with each swing made a grinding noise.  The shifting weight underneath the rafter was responsible for the creaking, creating an intricate symphony of leather and wood. 

Below it, lingering silently in the morning sun, hung Cedric.  Wrapped in the belt loop of his scabbard, his body swayed back and forth, back and forth.  Cedric was the pendulum of the same old grandfather clock implied by the rhythmical noise of his arc.  Time, contrary to the clock he emulated, did not move for him.  It was still, stopped suddenly by a quick drop and a final, fleeting sigh of breath.  The first moment of peace he truly had in an eternity.  The hands of time were frozen, cold, and dead, hanging limp at Cedric’s sides.  His open eyes, staring straight ahead, were vacant.  They told no tales, no emotion.

Nothing else in the room aided the unsolved mystery.  Nothing except one single piece of paper, drenched in tears, which, scattered by the same gusting wind that caused his body to sway, lay upside-down at the foot of the bed.  Scribed on its underbelly, in black ink with a steady, knowing hand, lay only a dim, enigmatic explanation – Victor’s last words.