Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
It rests beneath his porch as he stumbles home. The whisky makes the world spin but as he focuses on the parcel enshrouded in brown paper, everything settles. After an evening reliving past glories, a whirlwind of reminiscences, he finds a place where he can stand still.
The evening's light drizzle has forged a hole in the wrapping. A gilt-edged frame glints in the glow of his shuttered lantern. The sight of it brings a smile to his lips. Finally, on such an appropriate night, it has arrived.
His hands shake as he unlocks the front door and bends down to pick it up. It is heavier than he expects, heavier even than the kit bags he lugged around on missions. Still, he can hardly have expected something ordinary from the famous and reclusive Artentus, can he? And certainly not after all the expense and near-humiliating pleading.
The urge to see it is almost painful. The second he is inside, before he stirs the fire back into life, before he lights the lamps, he tears the paper away. The sudden noise rends the air like a gunshot. He shines the lantern on sections at a time, illuminating flickering fragments piece by piece. His whole career, his whole life, has been building towards this moment. After all his accomplishments, this masterpiece is his legacy to the world; a portrait for the ages by the world's finest artist.
In the darting light, images emerge. A vast collage of pictures create one magnificent whole. He has anticipated one single picture to represent everything he has achieved. This far surpasses his hopes.
He stands back from it, opening the shutters to spray light across the canvas. Smears of paint and miniature images collate into a rubble-strewn vista. A lone cavalryman sits astride a calm horse amidst the chaos of a battlefield.
His first commission.
He remembers the battle. He can almost smell the gunpowder and the sand, hear the shouts of friend and foe alike. It was not his horse. Lieutenant Marshall had fallen, his let shot to pieces by a remarkably patient Qareshi. Someone had had to take control.
The world moves again. He sways against it. He needs another drink to steady himself, to gird himself against the nostalgia. The icebox yields chilled vodka and a splash of sharp orange juice. A sip, a shiver and he is ready.
He moves the lantern in close, peering at tiny segments. His hand shakes, adding to the illusion of movement. Smears of black suggest bullets, dots and speckles hint at enemies and rocks.
He earned his nickname that day. The Artist. Crimson brushstrokes on sandy backgrounds were to become his speciality. As his lantern wobbles, his first opus emerges, trickling from behind rocks and walls. Corpses of his enemies lie strewn across the vista painting a tale of victory and blood.
A gulp of vodka slips down. Citrus and alcohol sears a path down his throat like the graze of a bullet.
A horse flows over the desert, warriors rallying around him, looking to him for direction and he gave it. He was the pivot on which the world turned. This one battle was where his legend began. All stems from this one moment.
He takes another swing, his smile growing.
He thinks that the portrait will track his life's progress. That it will chart his rise from the Qarashi desert to the streets of Narjin. The campaign against the Ravennish and his exploits on the Ashtar plains. Depict his every victory on behalf of the Empire.
Instead it remains fixed on the one battle. His heart hammers as he takes swallow after swallow of burning fire. He has had enough of this desert. He craves another, any other.
He sweeps the lantern across the canvas, searching for some sign of something else. The microscopic stills whir past as fast as memory. Implacable, they move on. His mouth goes dry. His hand shakes, sending his empty glass tumbling to the carpet. Instead of landing gently, instead of being cushioned by the fabric, it shatters the silence. Slivers of glass spray outwards, like shrapnel from a mortar.
His lantern rests on an echo. A spattering of paint spews sand, earth and rubble into the air. A distant fortification destroyed by his artillery at his instruction. Tides of war turn on such moments. On that day, the Qareshi paused, uncertain for the first time. It turned an attritional fight into a rout.
Pain clenches a fist around his heart. He does not want to see any more, to remember any more. But he cannot look away. Almost on its own accord, his hand moves on.
Inch by slow inch, memories are splayed on the canvas. Bodies scattered like chaff. The exhilaration of being sat atop his horse and bearing witness to such a triumph. The dust scratching down his throat with every breath. The slow realisation as they picked through the wreckage and scoured what remained of the settlement for any final pockets of resistance.
He sent the other soldiers away to follow a sequence of pointless orders. Anything to put some distance between them and what he expected to discover.
When he reached it, he was alone on canvas as he had been in life. There were no barricades. No war rooms. No weapon stores. Just a cluster of houses. Market stalls. A school blown to smithereens.
Pieces of body lay scattered around. Now, staring at the graphic representation, it stirs his stomach and his gorge rises. He wants to vomit out his guilt. To purge his fear that somehow someone has discovered the truth hidden only inside his brain.
At the time, however, he exulted in it. This was his doing. He controlled the battlefield. He dictated who died. Only he could possibly understand what it took to ensure the prosperity of hit homeland. Empathy was only for the weak-willed.
His hand itches to reach for the gun at his hip, his palm brushing against the cold butt. His mind screams at him to track down Artentus and put a bullet through his skull. Yet he delves only deeper.
In his stride through the portrait, he can almost feel the rising anticipation. His whole body tingles with what is to come. Then, he existed on the edge. He had taken on a mighty enemy and emerged victorious. Heightened perhaps by fear, his awareness stretched beyond him, seeming to encompass the whole world. Not a breath of wind escaped his attention. Not a shifting grain of sand.
Nor the faint scrabble of a hand against the wreckage.
Finally, he is shown standing over the prone figure; a teenager attempting to drag himself out from under the debris. Even now, especially now, he can remember a hand searching for purchase, every flailing movement increasing desperate. He can see the boy's other hand reaching towards his waist.
“No. You cannot know this. No one knows this.”
His hand finally finds his gun. He draws. Anger drums through his veins. This is impossible. This cannot be allowed.
The boy's eyes stare out at him from the canvas. The pain he remembers is gone. It its place is a hard, cold rage. His vision blurs and the figures appears to move, his arm ever reaching for an invisible, imagined weapon.
Except.
There is a dash of grey. A minute detail within the final image. A gun rising, rising.
A single shot rings out.
