We are the Music Makers a short story by Garry Kilworth
In the month of June, at the beginning of the century, the men began to drift back from the wars. By July they were arriving in Bohemia by the thousand, some still in soiled and shabby though recognisable regimental uniform, but mostly they were in rags. Their muskets had been thrown away to rust in foreign ditches. Their cannons and mortars were stuffed with dirt and moss. Their swords were broken or hidden under rotten logs, along with ammunition pouches full of percussion caps. 'It was a massacre,' Alexi said after the attack. 'We were cut down like wheat under scythes.' The colonel was shocked. 'What are you saying? It was a the turning point of the battle. If we had not charged, the day would have been lost.' The wars were not yet over, in fact they had only just begun again. But this was not even their fight. The men of Bohemia had joined one army or the other for various reasons, mostly to do with poverty rather than patriotism, while their officers had gone out seeking to add glory to their other accomplishments, needing to be rich in honour if not in wealth. 'You are my friend, Alexi,' said the colonel, 'but I totally reject your view of this incident.' 'It was no incident, it was a slaughter.' There were those of course, who had returned with limbs missing, parts of their bodies left lying in the mud of some alien land keeping company with dead and rotting comrades. These men tended to cluster round the Charles Bridge, in the beautiful city of Prague, where they begged for crusts of bread. The narrow cobbled streets around the bridge, whose architecture and statues were the envy of all other European cities, echoed with the clump of wooden crutches, the scraping of dragged legs, the clip-clip of the blind man's cane. They clogged the passageways under nearby arches in the rain and hindered the carriages on the bridge when the sun shone. Once the war has no more need of such creatures, cripples become an embarrassment to the state. 'Henceforth,' muttered the colonel, turning from his former friend, 'we are as strangers.' 'As you wish,' replied Alexi, stiffly, 'but you know, I'm not blaming you. I'm simply giving my opinion. You should not turn from the truth because it hurts.' The authorities issued a decree that any man found loitering in the streets, with no visible means of occupation, would be deemed a vagrant and thrown into the city's prison. Thus their numbers were thinned and those who remained behind gathered together such coin as they had and purchased barrel organs and hurdy-gurdies, on which
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