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The one whose head once held the crown walked the streets of his former kingdom.
The sunlight burned his tired eyes as he gazed at what was to his sides.
On his left, a street, people running, some from joy, others from fear, at least that was what he could make out of the frenzied, screaming crowd.
To his right a marble figure with a now mangled visage, likely shattered by a stray cannonball from the artillery barrage a few nights prior. Even with its face missing, he knew it well. Many times he walked past it, admiring and re-admiring the craftsmanship of the mason who gave it form. Many others knew it by heart, and could, in their minds, shape the marble form to once again show the face of the man it resembled. Many chose not to.
The man obscured his face with the harsh shadow cast by the sun onto the cloak which he wore, made from tatters and found in a pile of rubble. He neither knew who it once belonged to or cared sufficiently to find out. It was his now, and judging from the chants the gathered men were shouting, it would be his a long time more.
"Glory! Glory! Glory! To the invaders from the north!", they sang.
Blind men! Deaf men! He thought to himself. Had they forgotten how they came and killed and plundered and raped? How their cannonballs threw down the walls which had stood for a thousand years, and caved the roofs over their heads?
"Death to the Kingdom! Death to the king! Glory! Glory! Glory! To the invaders from the north!"
The king gave the crowd a glance. He saw young men, women, people of all sizes and shapes, and veterans; people with scars from the edges of blades on their faces, across their eyes. People who had seen war.
Fools! Imbeciles! Seniles! Had they forgotten of their country? Of the battles they fought against the invaders from the north? Of the blood their brothers spilled so that the Kingdom's walls would never shatter? Had they forgotten the speeches of their generals and the comradery of war?
