"For your crimes against the kingdom of Gondor and its steward, Denethor II, you are sentenced to death by hanging! May those above have mercy on your soul!" 

The boy stepped forward as the pronouncement was given by his captain, his voice cracking with emotion. Nobody had wanted this to happen. None would have foreseen it. 

"Any last words, Elliun?" The captain asked as another soldier tightened the noose around the boy's thin neck. He looked his captain in the eye, his lip trembling with barely restrained emotion. His dark lashes brimmed with unshed tears, fighting the grief and fear he felt in his heart. 

A lone tear finally escaped, tracing down his soot-covered cheek. He blinked as he tried to hold back more, but the floodgates opened, and he let out a stifled sob as he knees threatened to buckle beneath him. 

Still he did not avert his gaze until his captain looked away in sorrow, ashamed of the duty that he was called to do. 

Another sob tore from the boy's throat, and he felt the noose tightening around his neck as his legs gave out under him. The soldiers on either side of him lifted him up by his arms, offering temporary reprieve. 

After a moment he spoke, his voice small and shaky. "I had a duty once.  A duty to serve my kingdom. But my kingdom, sir, is beyond the stone walls of Minas Tirith..." 

In that moment he saw the faces of his parents, poor farmers barely able to make it from one day to the next. And yet, they smiled when he walked across their threshold, welcoming him with open arms and providing him with what little food they had. He remembered many times when strangers would pass by, his father would offer them food and shelter for the night; More often than not, his mother and father would go without on those nights. He remembered the fear in his heart when he overheard a scout, reporting that the orcs had passed over into those very farmlands.

"It's beyond the lifeless statues of long-past kings..."

He saw next his betrothed, laughing and carefree in a field of yellow flowers. They were to be married the following spring, in the hopes that the war would be ended by that time. But her parents had both been slain by raiding men from the East, and in her grief she had come to stay with Elluin's family until he returned to her.

"It's beyond the glory of her armies, and the banners of blue and white..."

He saw his comrades, most of them no older than he, laughing and making merry around a makeshift fire even as the city around them fell to dust. A moment later the laughs were replaced by cries of pain and fear as the enemy came upon them, striking down most of them where they sat before they could even draw their weapons. He remembered holding the blood-soaked hand of his best friend in the aftermath, even as the life left his deep blue eyes. 

He took a long, hitching breath, stifling another sob as he met the captain's gaze again. "That kingdom isn't one which we can see, for it's not a kingdom of brick and mortar but one of beating hearts. It is that which I fled this forsaken war to defend. It is the realm that I hold most dear to my heart. That is the kingdom I fight for." 

The captain nodded slowly, brushing away a tear which had come to his own eye. "Well spoken."

For a moment, it seemed he would stay his hand. His expression softened, and he took a hesitant step forward, the boards creaking under his weight.

The sound of a blade being drawn brought them both back to reality. 

"Make the order, captain, or I will," a knight wearing the livery of Dol Amroth said, his voice deadly quiet and slightly muffled under his helmet. He had come to make a statement, and he would see it made... At whatever cost.

The captain turned away slowly, his face downcast as he gave the order. A final tear trailed down the young soldier's face as his gaze followed him. 

"I forgive you, sir." 

The lever was pulled and the rope went taut as the captain flinched, tears streaming unheeded down his face. His heart yearned to know of the kingdom the boy had spoken of, the kingdom that spoke of gentleness and a peace that could not be touched by war. But that was all he knew. And all he ever would know. War. 

It would make corpses of them all.

This is a one-shot inspired by Brothers In Arms, a full Middle Earth story I'm in the process of writing about Gondorian soldiers and the gritty details of war. In one scene, one of the eponymous brothers, Turin, comes upon a man hanging at a bridge. It doesn't go into detail there, but this story is about that man.