He stood

He stood. High up on the broad tiled roof. The wind rushed past, tearing at his clothes, his hands, whipping his hair into his face. From where he stood he saw it all; the entire vast expanse of weather-beaten rooftops, broad flat courtyards of dusty stone; the far off trees a haze of ever shifting blue and green on the horizon.

He shut his eyes against the harsh glare of sunlight on stone, and as he did he thought he heard the wind carrying from below the hurried tumble of footsteps, the clash of steel on steel, his son crying? The August sun baking generations of rough-hewn masonry and rougher hewn soldiers, as this abrasive, abusive wind bit into his face, into the very perch on which he stood, but it wouldn’t shift him. Not now, not ever.