The Other Side of Time

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He sat astride the great war-horse, in the early morning, looking across the field toward the mist-obscured heights where the enemy waited. The chain-mail coif and hauberk weighed heavy on him; and there was another weight within him: a sense of a thing undone, a duty forgotten, of something valuable betrayed.

“The mist clears, my lord,” Trumpington spoke at his side. “Will you attack?”

He looked up at the sun, burning through the mist. He thought of the green vales of home, and the sense grew in him that death waited here on this obscure field.

“No. I’ll not unsheathe Balingore this day,” he said at last.

“My lord—is all well with you?” There was concern in the young squire’s voice.

He nodded curtly. Then he turned and rode back through the silent, staring ranks of his panoplied host.

At Molly’s place, the jukebox was breaking its heart over a faithless woman, but there was nobody listening but a few conchs sitting out on the rickety porch under the yellow bug lights, nursing beers and catching the breeze moving in off the gulf. It was after nine P.M. and the heat of the day was gone from the beach, and the surf coming up on the sand sounded lonesome and far away, like an old man’s memories.

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