The First March, part one

The sun crept up on the grimy horizon. Richard saw its first tentative winkings behind the low, dense cluster of trees to the east of their encampment. Up, over their scraggly heads came daylight, heaving its unimpressive lamp higher in the sky.

The night before, Richard had prayed that it would not come. The night, breezeless, with its brigade of tremulous stars, winking dizzily above him, were still better than his days, which went on without rest. The nights, though still restless, left Richard alone. He dreamt of that kind of solace in the day. He dreamt ofdigging himself a hole so deep that no light or person could ever find him again.

As Richard stirred, he felt the hunger within him stir, too. The war had not yet come to his village, and the men were well fed by the women and families of the village, just off from the encampment. He felt this hunger precipitously, just as, in his heart, pausing between beats, he felt the precipitous quake of fear.

Richard had not known war. He was still a young man, but not a particularly pleasant man. Fortune had not tipped too far to either side of the scale. He was just a man, and his experience in life had given him the sense that he was mostly in control of his own destiny, but that his own lack of ambition meant that there was little in the cards for him. This he understood, and it was a fair enough stance in his mind.

Then came the day when news of the war reached his home. The nervous chittering of the women at their washboards and the voice of the men, which drew up high with a sort of volatile pride, and came crashing into the pitch of lugubrious uncertainty, and then spanned the breadth of tones inbetween, told him that something great was coming. It was the hand of the world, come to move the men of the town into action, and Richard would be among them. It was the bitterest thing that Richard had tasted up until that very moment in his life, and strangely compelling: that someone he had never met—someone unknown to him and linked to him by the mere bonds of citizenship (of which Richard had a very weak sense)-- could decide that they'd like to have a war, and that thousands of other men would take up to fight it.

Richard had never seen a military man, either. He looked forward to it, though he hid that small boyish fancy from any of his fellow men. He imagined the bright, sturdy jacket rising around the neck, the crisp white collar resting against the throat, and a splendid cascade of bright brass buttons down the middle of the chest. He dreamed this, but felt certain that it was true.

No one in his village had uniforms. A wind-whipped young scout had come over the ridge to find several men tending the fields on the far edge of the village. He hadn't anticipated finding them there, and had been startled when he came up over the ridge to hear the synchronous whir of scythes in the grass. He urged his horse forward, using the pulse of his trot to mask the scout's own subtle gesture of surprise.