Soldier’s Parting

The soldier had been watching the path below since before sunset. Full dark was hours past, and the dew was gathering, weighting the wool of the cheap coat, the last of his mustering out benefits. “A man shall leave service with one months pay and one dress of civilian cloths which shall include small-cloths, shoes and coat.” He’d traded the shoes with a rag dealer for the canvas poachers pants, stained but whole.

The instincts of a smuggler’s son told him this trail would be the one the Pinebridge merchants used for their less-than-legal business traffic. This far from the border, a town so well supplied with luxury goods its one drafty tavern carried fine distilled spirits beside its local brews and ciders would be wanting more to keep their comforts when winter kept the passes closed. A trail that hadn’t seen a shod foot since the last rain, and the dark of the new moon. It was so perfect he’d already been counting his coins.

Six years as a soldier told him that he was wasting his time. There would be no obliging clutch of complacent human donkeys and their stale guards. This night they were all in their warm and dry, rattling the bedslats with their snores. The soldier wanted his blankets as much as the smuggler wanted gold to last the winter.  And more:  he wanted the home that had grown in his thoughts over years, that had become more solid and more real than a succession of barracks and camps, more substantial than the woman whose fine black hair had curled in sweaty tendrils around her face in the aftermath of their good-bye.