The Words Have Orders, And They Will March

I was put in this world to march, but one leg’s longer than the other, my boots are too tight, and I walk with a limp that gets more pronounced by the day.

Still, those were my early orders: March. And I am a man who follows orders, if not instructions. Instructions, it seems to me, are a good deal more complicated than orders. I spend so much time thinking about my feet that I have a difficult time following instructions beyond the first few sketchy details, and the inevitable confusion that results often as not gets me a savage whipping.

I’m one of the simple ones, a marcher plain and simple. Every once in a while they’ll ask me to carry something, or to lug something along as I march, but even these requests are best made in the form of a blunt, concise demand. I actually prefer if they just shove things into my arms or saddle me like a mule. I don’t need to know what it is I’m carrying or where it is I’m carrying it to.

When they holler at me to stop, I stop, and when they relieve me of my burden I just assume we’ve arrived somewhere. It doesn’t pay to look around or get too curious in my line of work. Marching is hard enough work as it is, emotionally and physically taxing work, particularly with my infirmities, and I generally have my hands full with the dust and the complaints of my body.

I also wouldn’t say we’re particularly well fed, although I don’t really have any frame of reference for that allegation, so perhaps I’m being unjust.

When the day comes that you simply can’t march anymore –and it’s inevitable, of course, and can arrive unexpectedly– they whallop you over the head and leave you by the side of the road. I’ve seen it a thousand times, but I have no clear idea of what happens to you after that. Some of the marchers claim that Sisters come along the road with wagons and haul the survivors of the cudgeling back to the convent to work in the orchards. Others allege that the unfortunate wretches are carried away by body snatchers and sold to the vivisectionists for ale money. It’s also possible, I’ve had reason to imagine while I’m curled up on the soggy earth at night, that the fallen marchers are simply fed upon by black birds and wild dogs.