Kilometers added up to days, days stretched like eternity.
I learned to read the weather by the movement of clouds, distinguish edible plants by leaf shape, anticipate ambushes by how birds fall silent. I learned to conserve the horse's strength and find beauty in the simple—in how morning fog lies on the river, turning it into a road of spirits, in the chirping of grasshoppers like the whisper of grass, in how the moon turns a dusty road into a silver river leading to unknown lands.
Strange thing—the farther I rode, the clearer I understood why I was riding.
Not just to find the marshal and deliver the dispatch. I was riding to understand myself. Who am I when the kingdom has collapsed, the army scattered home? Do I remain a captain when there's no one and nothing to captain? Do I remain a knight when there's no one to serve? Do I remain a noble when nobility has become an empty sound?
The answer came with each kilometer passed, with each dawn met in the saddle.
I remain a human. With all the weaknesses and doubts that make people people, not flawless heroes of ballads. And in that—strength. Not in loud titles and golden epaulets, but in the ability to continue the path when it seems meaningless. In the ability to share bread with a hungry boy. In the ability not to kill the weak, even if they deserve it.
The landscape was harsh and beautiful at the same time.
Forests where old branches intertwined like the hands of praying monks gave way to scorched fields with black skeletons of villages. I saw old people sitting on ashes and staring into emptiness, and children playing war among the ruins—the only game they had time to learn.
Nature lived its own life, indifferent to human tragedies. The wind still sang in the crowns, rivers still gleamed under the sun, stars shone with the same cold beauty. There was something comforting in this eternity. The world didn't collapse—our plans, our kingdoms, our illusions of justice collapsed. But the world remained.
Sometimes I talked to myself—the only companion who didn't require oats and didn't limp on the left front.
"Suffering is our daily bread," I muttered, looking at the stars. "I go only because I can. Because I must. Because if not me, then who?"
Freedom called to spit on everything, go as a hermit into the deep forests, build a hut by a lake and live like animals—simply and naturally. But duty pulled forward, to the marshal, to the answer, to the continuation of a story that might already be over.