You do not change sides because the horse has fallen

On the morning the banners changed, I was already facing the right way. This is not the same as switching sides, though people who have been left behind by a winning army prefer to call it that, because “I failed to see the board” is a poor sentence to say beside a burned cart. Switching sides is running after the strongest horse once the race is settled, while seeing the board is knowing which horse has begun to tire before the cheering crowd hears its breath.

I have done both, and I know the difference by the taste of the coin. A switcher waits for the pennon to come into view, then bows so low his forehead finds the mud, he calls it prudence because cowardice sounds worse when spoken aloud. The man who sees the board has already counted the wagons, the empty water skins, the lieutenant who no longer laughs at the captain’s jokes, the road that looks dry from a distance but takes a boot at the ankle. He may still bow, but he bows before the battle, when the bow can buy something.

click, click. The coin tells no truth, but it tells you which face you have been showing.

This distinction matters because everyone admires foresight after victory and condemns it as treason before. Lord Merrow’s men took our winter flour when I was thirteen, red pennons bright above their helmets, and left the sacks untouched when Lord Seln arrived under black cloth at dusk. My mother kept the keys, my father changed badges, and I learned that a promise made by a lord is only flour waiting to be counted by the next lord. Someone will say there was honor in remaining loyal to Merrow, even after his patrol had lost the road, but honor that cannot read a road is merely a brave way to starve.

Still, there are fools who confuse a good prediction with a good plan. They say, “I knew Seln would win,” as though knowing the weather makes a man dry, and then they stand beside an exhausted horse whose ribs are showing and wonder why the saddle slips. Seeing the board is not prophecy, it is attention: the shortened stride, the wet foam at the bit, the rider pulling harder because the animal has stopped answering softly. You do not change sides because the horse has fallen. You change your position because you noticed it was breathing wrong three miles back.

The brave fool in the roadside ballad stays with his lord to the final verse, and the song makes a splendid meal for men who already ate. The clever survivor hears the bridge collapse in the rhythm before anyone else, steps off the bridge, and is called faithless by those who drowned. I have no objection to being called faithless by drowned men.

But not every retreat is vision, and not every betrayal is timing. Some people simply want the winning lord’s table, and they would follow a lame mule if enough servants walked behind it. Their mistake is not that they changed sides, it is that they never looked at the board at all. They watched the banners instead of the roads beneath them, mistook noise for strength, and believed victory arrives with a trumpet rather than with tired horses, missing grain, and captains who have begun to count the exits.

That is why I cannot leave this subject alone: men keep praising loyalty as if it were a virtue independent of consequence, while consequence is the only witness that remains after the banners are packed away. I will take the side that can hold the road, feed the horse, and win the next morning, and if that makes me a turncoat, let the word keep its small comfort, unless the road turns again…