Beyond those sorry shades, the Dark Lord found the faces of the people he really missed, whose loss was deserving of his grief.Beyond those sorry shades, the Dark Lord found the faces of the people he really missed, whose loss was deserving of his grief. The soldiers of the Old Guard, who stood along side him against the empire's early enemies, his very first legionnaires, who had believed in him and spilt their blood in his campaigns. There were dukes, an admiral or two, distinguished officers and common soldiers who held their ends of the imperial line when enemy ranks closed upon them. They were men who had never left those first bloody battlefields, whose lifeless bodies adorned great funeral pyres in the streets of the first city-states to fall to him, or sank into the muck at the bottom of the river or sea to feed the myriad fish. The silent multitude haunted him. There were a few whose faces he saw, those who had died near him, a few, like the sandy- haired drummer boy of eight, who had died in his arms. But most of the helms covered only emptiness. I made myself a promise when we began this great work. I vowed I would remember each of you who fell in the name of my Empire, for it was yours as well. But as the wars went on and the losses multiplied, I just couldn't. All I can do now is lift a goblet to the memory of your deeds, and hope that somewhere, someone remembers, because I, the man you died for, cannot. He picked up his wine glass from the table before remembering he had ordered no wine set on the table before the meal. He had expected to be occupied until the last minute. His cup remained as vacant as the faces of the phantoms around him. "We shall drink a toast to you tonight," the Dark Lord promised aloud to the empty room around him. "To that I swear." The spectral company nodded in reply and faded back into the nothingness. Alone again, he turned his thoughts to the matters that would soon be at hand, namely explaining to his council their parts in his most recent plans of conquest. |