‘Bedura's Defence’ in The Slaying of King Qualin Tros of Bellid, transcribed as song by Fisher, Malaz City, last year of Laseen’s Reign.
- "An old man past soldiering
his rivets green, his eyes
rimmed in rust,
stood as if heaved awake
from slaughter’s pit, back-cut
from broken flight
when young blades chased him
from the field.
He looks like a promise only fools
could dream unfurled,
the banners of glory
gesticulating
in the wind over his head,
stripped like ghosts,
skulls stove in, lips flapping,
their open mouths mute.
‘Oh harken to me,’ cries he
atop his imagined summit,
and I shall speak ... of riches
and rewards, of my greatness,
my face once young like these
I see before me ... harken!’
While here I sit at the Tapu’s
table, grease-fingered
with skewered meat, cracked goblet
pearled in the hot sun, the wine
watered to make, in the
alliance of thin and thick,
both passing palatable.
As near as an arm’s reach
from this rabbler, this
ravelling trumpeter who once
might have stood shield-locked
at my side, red-hued, masked
drunk, coarse with fear, in
the moment before he broke—
broke and ran-
and now he would call a new
generation to war, to battle-clamour,
and why? Well, why ... all
because he once ran, but listen:
a soldier who ran once
ever runs, and this,
honoured magistrate,
is the reason—
the sole reason I say—
for my knife finding his back.
He was a soldier
whose words heaved me
awake." - ―Bedura’s Defence by Fisher