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He remembered marching through the village of Deirwaigh. His eyes were wide and tail still in icy fear as he padded onward to do his duty... for his king, for his country, for his fellow tails.

His mum and dad were stood in the doorway of their Earth. She was in tears, his father staunch and turning tail to salute his only cub. They had promised him their blessing to take the paw of his beloved vixen, Rhosyn, when he came back. He was, at twenty years of age, already old in society's eyes. This would be his last foray before settling down and having cubs. It was nonetheless a great honour to serve the muskiest foxes of the land... his betters had called upon him to serve the homeland. Calan had been called to stand with them, to hold the musky flag of pretender Erillian XX at the head of a band of rag-tag guerilla soldiers, fed up with the tyranny and evil of the incumbent supreme fox.

He wouldn't return. In fact, of the five thousand who set paw on that battlefield, barely a tenth made it back.

I talk of course of The Battle of Sho'lian Rise in the Autumn of 1461 where His Muskiness, King Nelotraae VII was defeated by the rebel uprising. It had come about because of his apparent intent to alienate a key ally in the wolves of the north. His loyal tails were not best pleased and, led by Erillian - his forces a mix of disillusioned Earther lords and foreign canine species from overseas - they clashed with the eight thousand heavily-armoured knights, archers and footpaw soldiers of the incumbent monarch in a three-week skirmish that caused heavy losses on both sides.

The stuff Calan saw... the violence, the evil. It was enough for him to crumble in the face of adversity. He escaped death when he handed the banner to an Earther Lord who promptly charged through the line toward the desperate cocoon that was waning around the soon-to-be-defeated Nelotraae. Shot in the shoulder, his left hock broken as he'd struggled through the mud and tears running down his muzzle, Calan crawled away from the horror and into a hollow oak tree. He curled up, clenching his eyes shut and grasping his muddy paws over his ears.

The sounds never left him. The smells would haunt him forever.

He only awoke when the sun rose. The air smelled different... bitter, metallic, tart. He limped across the moss and out to the marsh. Nothing was there. No bodies, no blood, no bawling. It was over... but where was everybody?

Poor Calan! He had actually succumbed to his wounds in that tree a matter of hours after he'd sought shelter there; and it was there he remained for centuries, his skeleton forever propped up in the cavernous trunk.

The poor cub now knows only that his spirit awakes in the sunshine and, diligently and without knowing any different, sets about making sure that the new king's return to the battlefield is a happy one. As a Standard Bearer, the young fox still wore his red and black leather attire with his ears cuddled into stitched protective caps. The arrow wound still pierced his shoulder, stinging, sore and scabbed with the passing years. Calan cradled it as much as he could whilst setting about his tasks. He limped as he unearthed centuries-old cured chicken, stewed honey and moss for meads, and seared sweet grasses over a small fire, before sitting in the damp, dew-soaked gloom with just the hay bales as his background... such benign roundels slumped in the dawn, earthly jewels of the rising sun.

He'd also spent those early hours picking the freshest Rowan berries... he knew they were Erillian's favourite. Calan was planning the party on a battlefield, as he had done for hundreds of years, out in the open air of a twenty-first century world.

We've changed so much, He murmured to himself, looking up from his stew pot, his thin red muzzle clouded by the yeasty fruitiness of crushed bilberries and sloes, I can't imagine what it's like in the villages and towns beyond here. He's that lonely spectre you can see through the eerie mist of the marshes near the village of Albion-supra-Cauda, preparing a long refectory table in the bottom of the valley where so many lost their lives.

They all come out once a year, to talk, drink and be merry, to reminisce of the victory they had here many moons ago... and they rely on Calan to have everything prepared. This morning was no different. Once the cooking was done, he set the table, a length of split oak that was so long it almost vanished into the ethery distance. The strike of vinegary, mossy musk hitting the air was a waft that said everything of his happiness, guilt and relief.

It was now as Calan turned to the sun, a pale globe of melon-orange light that tore a fondant hole in the mist, that the soldiers emerged. Paws were about shoulders and wounds were healed as the band strode forward with the king at their head. Erillian's gold ear caps glistened in the sun, the new monarch joined by his adherents and clad in a long, split leather skirt with a silver breast and tail plate. Others were armoured too, their tails capsulated in silver or sheet bronze whilst their heads were masked. Leather ear caps rounded out their war garb, keeping their hearing safe from the swinging of errant swords. Some were missing eyes, others their tail. Some had horrid injuries to their muzzles... but the smell was one of celebration and happiness.

As they sat themselves at the table, the king approached and put his paw around the slender shoulders of the Standard Bearer.

"Tell me, young cub. What is your name?" You ask that every year, He murmured under his breath... but he cleared his throat and answered his 'better'. "Calan, Your Muskiness..." He turned tail to the king in respect, "...my name is Calan, cub of Vux the Red." "Well, Calan... tell me, do you ever think about those outside our valley?" "I... I just hope we did some good, Your Muskiness." Erillian smiled, his teeth barely showing before rising his muzzle skyward. "Smells like peace!" He sniffed deeply, sighing and closing his eyes. "I hope so, sire. I really do." "You smell immature, my boy. How old were you when you gave of your tail for this great land?" "Twenty. Twenty and a day, your Muskiness."

The king's muzzle, once so concentrated on a mead-soaked piece of chicken leg, chewed slower and his tail drooped for the loss of one so young.

"I'm sorry." He murmured, placing a comforting paw on Calan's left shoulder, squeezing gently through the leather. "It... it was an honour to be at your side." Calan replied, smiling and blushing, his ears pinning as his king, his hero wagged in his favour once again. "You... you gave your tail for this land. We..." It was then that Erillian turned, reaching down to the table and thumping it with his free paw, garnering everyone's immediate attention, "...we all gave our entire musky being for this great country."

Of those that had eyes, they looked his way.

Of those that still had tails, they wagged.

Everybody smiled, nodded and rose their pottery flagons... those crude, one-handled mugs that were of the trees and clay that bubbled in caramel layers beneath the land upon which many footpaws had strode. The soldiers simply toasted their king's sentiment and the mere youngster who provided of their final meal over and over and over. Being called back from the Foxterlife for a feast so welcoming was worth the journey!

With the ghostly murmurings of the knights, Earther Lords and long-dead footpaw soldiers leaning into the ear like a low echo, Erillian turned back to Calan.

"For all you wagged for us, my boy, let me at least do this for you."

And it was then that he panned his battered, blood-spattered paws out into the grey wall of fog and sun-pierced trees. Someone was padding towards the group, drifting across the marshwater... so delicate, so wonderfully slender.

It was Rhosyn.

She padded right up to Calan, her luxuriously long tail wafting high.

"I waited for you. I... I never took another."

He could do nothing more than kneel before her, his tail forward and slunk between his legs in reverence.

"Wait for me every year, my love. I will be here. Please..." Calan could barely believe that she was here, stuttering and pinning his ears... but now the smell of a honeysuckle scent struck his nose, her delicate left paw slinking beneath his jaw to lift his eyes to meet hers.

"I will." She smiled before she turned tail and, with a look over her left shoulder, disappeared into the new sunlight. "Such is the duality of life, my boy." Erillian murmured as he came back alongside his charge, both paws around an acorn-cup of grass and sloe mead, "She had a great life. She served her Earth well, and her king too. Rhosyn will always be back for you."

Calan was left to watch his vixen pad away into the ether, the damp grasses and the aroma of strange contentment in strange company invading his sinuses.

"You OK, my cub?" "I... uh, yes, sire."

As the king left his side, the smell of Erillian's breath and tail lay thick a meaty and sickly, sweet mellitus, the sounds of the soldiers lost in their prayers to the Great Earth and the Moon a cacophony of both pride and regret. It was a mixture that spoke of wishing and affirmation all at once. Calan had heard it all before... the crying, the laughing, the yearning to be whole once again. Just like now, with having seen, smelled and touched Rhosyn for the first time in over five-hundred years, he could totally relate.

The celebration done, the entourage padded off into the mist, whilst Calan took to clearing up like the diligent fox he'd always been. After all these years, he was still keen on pleasing his king, as well as serving the tails of his nation. As a matter of fact, he still does.

Even when they aren't celebrating, you may catch Calan sitting beneath that oak tree where the marsh gives way to the rolling hills. Perhaps you may notice his sweet musk as it drifts in the breeze. His bark is an ever-present in this bittersweet vale, lamenting the loss of his friends and his future mate.

So, if you're ever wandering through the valley where those foxes fell in defense of their fellow tails, leave him a coin or perhaps a sliver of chicken in gratitude so that he knows that all the work he's ever done, everything he gave up so long ago, was not for nothing.