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The sun creeps over the horizon, and spears of rust and scarlet streak through masses of blue and grey.
(Scarlet. Ruby. Blood.)
Rattle. Gasp. He lifts his head. The world spins.
The wheels of a cart squeak to a marketplace.
Around. Once more. A barrel rolls across a flagstone floor. Twice.
A child’s hoop clatters to a rest. Thrice. Third time’s the charm.
Blink. The world slams to a stop. Spilt blood glitters in the dim light. It looks for all the world as if some massive, impossibly strong hand has crushed a mound of – garnet, perhaps, or carnelian – until it liquidized, scattering the resulting crumbs across the fields of the damned. The fields of the damned. Thats what the soldiers call the sites of these bloodbaths. He’s never thought he’d end up on one of these. join the list of his fellows ‘presumed dead’. ‘Presumed’, because no-one bothers to check these fields for survivors. They all die eventually. Damned. That’s what he is now. Damned.
Blink. Squint. He can just about make out the banner that he fights under. Fights. Fought? Matters little now.
Rattle. Gasp. There ...oh. Well.
A path carves through the veritable mountain of bodies. What’d made that? He can’t recall. A soldier lies towards the edge of the left ...pile. The colours of Morvairia (Damn the place, damn the people, and by all the gods; Damn the king.) swathe him, black and a poisoned, venomous green. An enemy. A foul, immoral, power-thirsting man who holds no concept of honor and disparages all morality. He is the antithesis of what makes a man. He is foul. He is a monster. He is ...twelve.
His helm and armor are ill-fitting, meant for someone two, perhaps three times older than him. The shield he carries dwarves him. In death, his face - not yet rid of the excess fat of youth - is frozen still in a tabloid of pure and utter terror. Had the army even hesitated in felling him? He knows the answer. There can be no hesitation in battle, in war. You kill or you die. And yet. What he would give for that to change. He valiantly resists the urge to be violently ill. Lain upon the ground as he is, the contents of his stomach have nowhere to go save his face and neck. He wants to die with a modicum of dignity, thank you very much.
To the right. A child, no more than fourteen. Red, bronze, gleaming in the dawning red sun. Ally. Comrade. Seething rage and defiance is a cracked stone mask marring his visage. Hints of fear and worry and pain, so much pain shine through beneath it. Why are you here? There is always something. Money, glory, the “thrill of the blade”. Plain, wretched survival. There is always a reason, nonsensical though it may be.
He squints. This child reminds him discomfitingly of his youngest brother. Brother. Brother... his brothers. What are they doing. Plucking the chicken for eve meal, perhaps. Or providing help to father, in the fields. Being the stubborn old man he is, he’ll refuse it. He really shouldn’t. His bones are failing him early, as the village wisewoman keeps telling him. But then, as is his mind. Perhaps they are awaiting his usual letter. It won’t come. No, there’ll be an official notice. Thick, creamy parchment, elaborate border. A standardized message.
‘Dear ___,
It is with my great regrets that I inform you of the death of one ___.
He was lost to the noble cause of defending our country. It is the greatest honor a soldier can achieve, and brings favor upon your household.
There shall be a sum of 20 shillings given to your family in compensation.
My condolences,
_____
He’s written out his fair share of those. Perhaps his family will receive a letter from him after all. He can just about hear his mother’s scream. His father’s absolute denial. His brothers’ quiet resignation. They’ve been preparing for this eventuality since he was forced to enlist. Little Emelye’s frantic confusion. Maybe that new babe he’s been told they’ve had will cry for him.
He lets his head fall. Perhaps some sympathetic morvarian soldier will spare the child. He doubts it. But perhaps. A crow flies overhead. He turns his head to track it’s progress. A mistake. The world spins. Everything doubles before his eyes. It’s not appreciated. Now he sees double the spilled guts and decapitated heads and bodies with limbs twisted in some horrifying freakish postures, all slack muscles and unnatural angles, all wrong wrong wrong wrong wrongwrongwrong- great. Awesome. Wow.
Crow. Right. Crow. Heralds of death. Dis Pater. The pale rider. Superstition, maybe. It might be true. Certainly seems like it. Then again, it might be pain speaking. The stabbing, spiking pain in his chest feels leaching, in that manner only fatal wounds can. It rattles in his lungs when he draws breath, writhes at the smallest motion. It seems that it searches for his heart, the coal runners of the accursed mine that is his body. Their sole purpose seems to be to make his death as- memorable, shall we say, as possible.
His death. An uncomfortable topic to ponder. No. Uncomfortable is ...understated. Terrifying. Yes. Terrifying works. He serves – served? - in war. Where people die. He knows that. But. He’s never been quite so ...afraid. Or so close to dying. He can feel it, hovering and simmering just beyond his field of vision. It doesn’t feel evil, not really. Warm, more than anything else. Comforting. It's a lie- of course it’s a lie- when has death ever been comforting?
...But then again, he’s seen the horrors in the eyes of the men they’d rescued from the so called ‘reconnaissance centers.’ Not sure they could still be called men, not with their shrunken, nail-less fingers, their blind, lifeless, blinding eyes. There’d been a boy, barely old enough to hold a shield the right way up, who’d kept so very still. Still in the manner of a watchful deer, still like no child should be. He’d kept silent, too. When he spoke, if he spoke, his words were guarded, pliant, submissive. When he died - a proper, noble, courageous, rightful death (-he had shuddered in rage, and he wasn’t the only one – they'd all been forced to enlist, been told that they were fighting for a noble cause, and now they were being told that this- this child’s death was rightful? There’d nearly been mass mutiny-) he'd still thought it a mercy.
Now, confronted with his own imminent demise? All he recalls is the terrified pain in his eyes.
Burn. Someone takes torch to his chest. Little snakes and lances worm their way through the very bones of his ribcage. He’ll be fine, he’ll be fine he’ll be fine. Just fine. Fiiiiiiiiine. It doesn’t matter that he’ll never see his brothers again, doesn’t matter that he won’t get to threaten Artemisia’s latest conquest, doesn’t matter that he won’t get to tell his Ma he’s sorry, doesn’t matter that he doesn’t even know what two of his siblings look like- it doesn’t. It. Does. Not.
Brambles cage his faltering heart; thorns dig into the sides of his lungs. Blood pounds in his ears. It sounds like crashing ocean waves, or so he’s told. He wouldn’t know. He’s never even seen the sea. He’ll be the only member of his family to hear it, hopefully.
He lies there, unmoving, for a while. Then something ...changes. Something snaps inside him, something clear starts clouding, crumbling at the edges. Something pierces his heart straight through. Darkness creeps up on the edges of his vision. The rest of it blurs. The world pauses, some staticky quality catching at the edges. Through the rapidly gathering fog, he panics, fuzzy and indistinct.
He doesn’t- I don’t- he- I- he-
I don’t want to die.