Sparrowhawk
The old sheds had that neglected and echoing ambience that
always gave him mild flash-backs to the LSD trips of his youth. Flash-backs
was, perhaps, too strong a term. Now they were simply vivid memories of the
type usually conjured up by smells, the sort where you find yourself
experiencing the exact feelings you had at the time.
The distraction was welcome.
With boots crunching on the grit and dust of the concrete floor, he even managed a smile. He recalled
the dire warnings, warnings intended to save him from the half-hearted rebellion of his
teenage years. Well, his nose hadn’t dropped off and, instead of becoming the
delinquent waster, he was now the second most senior officer in his nation’s
army.
He moved on, passing through another door into the outermost shed,
smaller and lighter than the others. The morning sun seeped through the grimy
windows, projecting shadow copies of the wire screen polygons onto the rear
wall. All the boxes were wide open. There was no hiding place. The cage was
empty. The last hope had not arrived.
It had been eight days now. Plenty of time for the runners, to have pushed on through the torn earth and shattered trees - plenty of time to have sent back their report.
Should he take the risk anyway, lead his men on out of here, advance - and chance tens of thousands
of lives? The alternative?
A slow attritional defeat.
But, his own rationale counted for nothing - the homeland would be left defenceless if the
operation failed and, perhaps, it was better the decision was out of his hands.
Pushing through the outer doors, barely noticing the drop in temperature, he squinted for a last futile scan of the sky.
The pretty sparkling from the hoar
frost failed to penetrate - failed to clear, from his mind, the gloom of defeat.
Six miles away a sparrowhawk moved its head with staccato precision, as it tore chunks of meat from a dead pigeon, carefully avoiding the metallic
tube attached to its prey’s left leg.
The meal would ensure the hawk's survival for another week, a brief moment of victory in a never-ending war against a bleak, bitter, barren winter.
Image: Sparrow-Hawk available from Wikimedia by Creative Commons Licence
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