It was a beautiful starry night. The sky was glowing in its fullest bright. It had bestowed us with a shower of thousand stars. There was silence all over. But it was scary. It was the silence of the dead. There were bodies all around me - And silent mourning. My men were lamenting the loss of their brave brothers – Brave Gordinolans. They had stood for me – even in times, when death was staring at them. But the day was brutal – an assault nothing less vicious than the attack on a poor deer by a pride of lions. It was a day; I wish I never see again.
The congenial period of preparation was over. The battle lines were drawn. Right from the time, the battle bell had rung; Zelekos (Commander of Penhaskia) had marched with vigor and unseen ferociousness. We faced an army as vast as the expansive sky and armor as powerful as the mighty ocean - an enemy fiercer than anything we had seen before. With paucity of arms and ammunition on our side, we face the most difficult battle in our lives - A battle which goes beyond arms and ammunition - A battle of who-wins-the-game-of-wits. But I was losing it. Falling as a pawn to my worthy opponents
In this war for supremacy of the earth, one has to go down and the other would emerge victorious. Am I destined to be the loser at this? Was I simply not justifying the Gordinolan pride? Was it a wrong battle to enter in the first place? Did I over-estimate my abilities as a commander? Or was it simply that destiny had chosen this way for me? Destiny!! Isn’t that the word, helpless people use; when they cannot have things their way? Aren’t the people who are destined to win, invariably the people, who have challenged destiny and made their way!!
I thought of my MASTER - The true emperor who laid more faith and belief in me than I could probably could ever have. How would HE plan this out if he was in this situation? Heck! He would never have led his country and fellowmen in such a position. But is retreat a choice? Hell No!! I am too far into this ugly battle - I had lost more resources than I could muster to fight this enemy at hand. My foe had this battle simply his way. And there was no way I see that myself standing true to the faith that HE had put in me. Was I failing my MASTER? Was I failing myself?
Questions! Questions! And more questions!! Should I have better analyzed my strengths and led this war? Am I betraying my people who had ornamented me with unlimited resources? Questions that I have no answers to!! I was at my own faults; having committed some strategic blunders - wrong decisions that had claimed the lives of my soldiers. I was tasting failure like never before.
Amidst dead soldiers, here I was – their commander - contemplating the choices that I had made. Wrong choices!! Wrong territory chosen for expansion!! A better scrutiny would have simply shown me that the Penhaskians would have had this battle their way, even before it started. Was I too arrogant and haughty to have condoned such glaringly simple facts? Though into this war, could I have chosen a better turf for this battle? A place where I could have played to my strengths! Again questions and questions!! Tormenting questions!! I can barely answer them. I am willing to pay the cost for my follies, but how would I substantiate the killing of my brave soldiers? All the wrongs have been done! And paid for! Quiet heavily!
But let bygones be bygones. I look to wake up to a different morning tomorrow. A morning which will be bright as ever – it raises a hope that I can salvage my pride. But tonight, all I see is darkness spread around this beautiful sky. My mind is not beautiful and brave anymore. Neither am I.
But even this cloud has its silver lining - 'There is no better position in life than being pushed down, with your back lying on the ground. It puts you in a place, where things can’t get worse anymore – it can only get positive.'
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