I was born into a land of plenty. A perfect world of love and life and light.
Then I broke it.
--
“Oh, fu-”. The ground knocked the curse out of Matt as he slipped and fell. Why did nobody tell me blood was so fucking slippery? He twisted to get back to his feet, just as he heard a whoosh, and looked up to see the blur of a javelin knocking a hole in the air where he had been standing a second ago. The missile hit the person behind with a meaty chunk, and Jasper’s screams of agony lifted Matt back to his feet. Wet, warm blood sprayed from Jasper’s leg, soaking Matt’s trousers and mixing with the sucking mud. Matt lifted his foot with a squelch, stepped forward and fell into the combat stance. The enemy was running towards him, a horde of strangers dressed like him; in simple farmer’s clothes, holding simple spears, trained to sow and tend their fields.
In just a few short days, his world had turned from golden wheat, simple and familiar mundane work and the comforts of his family, to screams, metal and the smell of iron and fear.
Matt looked back at the screaming Jasper, who was desperately trying to hold back the flow of blood, hands wrapped around the spear shaft, and tried to hold off the wave of panic and darkness. Taking a deep breath, he tried to think of the smell of lavender. The simple flowers standing in a vase on the rickety table in their tiny kitchen, crushed into powder when they wilted, his mother sprinkling it into the washbasin.
As Jasper’s screams were fading behind him, Matt remembered their conversation from this morning, when Jasper was sharpening his spearpoint, a whetstone working with practised movements. “When tiredness, fear, noise, the smells, panic… when it’s just chaos, when the battle threatens to take your sanity. Find a memory of home. Something that makes sense to you. Something to shield you from this fucking world. To guard against the madness. A home...” Matt heard the sound of the whetstone against the backdrop of battle. The voice of a young man, a boy, a warrior. “A home. Here.” Jasper jabbed his finger hard into Matt’s chest.
With a deep breath and in the memory of lavender, Matt re-found his sanity as he wildly deflected a spear thrust at him, nearly slipping in the blood again. Why hadn’t Jasper told him how fucking slippery blood made grass? All around him, a chaos of jabbing spears and swinging hatchets. A thin blue ribbon that they had tied to the front of their tunics was all that separated ally from foe as madness reigned over the battlefield. Taking a step back to find his balance, he looked down at his spear, the point rusty and blunt. Jasper’s screams had faded now, replaced by the memory of his whetstone, working again and again.
“Sorry,” he whispered, bending down and prising Jasper’s fingers off the spear. There was no answer from the dead man, and the point of his new spear reflected sunlight as he stood back up, a sliver more confident than before.
The corporal shouted, “On three, forward with me! Advance, advance, advance!”
With a conscious effort, Matt visualised the footwork he had learned. Two weeks of daily practice back in the barracks, and still his brain struggled to recall the movements. What was easy on the training field was nearly impossible here. Front foot straight, back foot angled. Balance through my hips. Move the front foot first, push with the back foot and pull it after. Shield up, shield up, shield UP! And thrust, SHIELD UP!
The corporal began to count, and Matt spent One realising his shield was gone, and Two looking for it, spotting it on the ground, far away. On THREE he stepped forward with the others; shield behind him and footwork lessons forgotten. Which foot should lead? Which foot was the left one? He looked down to remind himself and extricated his foot from the root nearly wrapped around it. A second fall in ten heartbeats? Come ON, Matt. Focus!
A whistling sound came from up ahead, and moments later, a barrage of stones and rocks struck their formation. Most of the missiles bounced off the shields raised all around him, but some passed by. Soft, loud sounds as they hit flesh, and Matt looked down the line, seeing a group of veterans hunched down behind the shield wall. One of them said something and grinned, the other two laughed with genuine mirth at whatever he had said. How can they be so calm? Matt wondered, heart hammering in his chest.
A crunch came from his left, and Matt turned his head to look at the ruined face. A second ago, she had been pretty. Now… Her jaw was unhinged, her teeth lay scattered in the mud at her feet. Matt felt bile rising as the girl threw her head back in pain, jaw hanging down in a thread of flesh as she tried to scream through an exposed throat. Matt pissed himself and grabbed his spear tighter, forcing himself to look away as the darkness clouded the edge of his vision.
A moment later, the barrage of rocks stopped, and the enemy came charging. At least sixty of them, screaming and yelling. “Hold!” the corporal shouted somewhere off to the left as Matt’s legs shook violently. “HOOOLD!” He forced his legs to stop shaking and reset his stance, jamming his feet into the mud for balance.
The veterans were moving down the line, down the ranks of cobblers and farmers, blacksmiths and tailors, touching shoulders and muttering words of encouragement, calming their nerves. Matt felt absurdly grateful when one touched his shoulder and whispered into his ear. “You’ve got this, brother.”
“Lavender,” he muttered as he tightened his grip on the spear as a man came charging towards him out of the oncoming mass. He lowered his balance before thrusting the spear out towards the small and compact man. The weapon caught the other man in the pit of his elbow, easily slicing through the fabric of a plain woollen shirt and into the flesh beneath. As he pulled the spear out and back for a second thrust, Matt saw his enemy throw him a quizzical look and realised he had said that louder than intended. Laughing now, from the absurdity of it all, he shouted, “LAVENDER!” And thrust again.
Jasper’s spear was sharp and cut through the man’s tunic with no resistance, and pulling the spear back out rewarded Matt with a shower of dark, red blood. He sidestepped to avoid a wild swing of a hatchet as the man counter attacked with a last effort.
The other man was so close. His blue eyes lined with the memory of smiles, now contorted in pain. That’s something else Jasper forgot to tell me. How close we would be. A few weeks ago, they were sowing seeds to feed their families. Now they were soaked in mud and blood with sharp metal separating them. The man looked old–perhaps twenty-three–and Matt wondered if he had a wife. If he had hugged his children as he picked up his spear and left out the door.
Matt shivered at the sheer insanity of their proximity. In another timeline, his sister would invite the man in for supper. They would eat bread and cheese and discuss the harvest, nervously laughing as they toasted “May the Wasting Wait” as they clinked glasses.
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Matt shifted his spear, couched it in the pit of his arm, and rushed at the older man a last time. When the spear caught the man in the throat, Matt stumbled at the sudden resistance, crashing into the stranger. More intimate than a kiss, he was a hand’s width away from the man as he gurgled through a ravaged throat and the light left his eyes. Something started to break inside Matt.
Matt tried to retrieve his spear. It was stuck, and Matt tugged at it gently, without success. Fuck this. Fuck this battle, fuck the Duke, and fuck me for accepting the recruiter’s silver. His spear had caught on something inside the man. What’s in there? Tendons? Muscles? A windpipe? Over the last hours, Matt had learned much about the contents of a man’s body.
With tears running down his face and his muscles burning with fatigue, Matt put his foot firmly on the man’s chest as he pulled the spear out; inch by inch. Jasper’s spear. Jasper’s blood, which was congealing inside his boots as he pulled the spear loose, together with… pieces of the old man. That looks like a tube. And some stringy tissue. Something inside Matt was being torn apart.
A shriek drew his attention, arresting the breaking of his soul. There was still some living to be done. Still, some killing left before he could rest.
“Lavender!” He shouted again, throwing himself back into the battle. Adrenaline kept the pain and fatigue at bay, and as the old man watched him from the ground, eyes without judgement, Matt thrust and ducked and ran and cut and swung until he had no more to give. He looked up at a line which was no longer a line, but a jagged chain of humans, of pain and blood and screams and clashing metal. A mad melee of men, spear and hatchet, that roiled like stormy waves back and forth on the battlefield.
From behind; three sudden blasts of the trumpet sounded. The signal for a rushing advance.
For a long second, Matt didn’t understand, arms and legs shaking as he tried to hold his spear up. How could they advance now? Advance into that? His vision blurred with steel and the colour red as a wave of men caught up with him, pushing him forward towards the wall of sharp metal.
“Their cohesion”, Jasper had told him this morning, is what separated Duke Hawth’s Rangers from Duke Carrow’s army of common scum. Their ability to stand resolutely together, shields locked and spears out; even in the face of enemies that turned your blood to ice and made you piss your pants. That cohesion had carried them all the way here to the Tarrow Pass, turning away every opposing force for leagues. Three hundred men and women had left Gamut only two weeks ago.
Thirty soldiers were left, fighting and screaming and dying in the foothills of the great Dagger Mountains. Cohesive my fucking ass, Matt thought, as he let his training override his brain and almost perfect footwork propelled him into the fight in front.
A minute later, or an hour, a sudden and strange quiet settled on the battlefield. A thunderous silence of men falling to their knees, some screaming in pain, some dying without dignity. The sounds of a battle ending. Matt wiped blood, tears and sweat from his eyes as he looked up to see a handful of men fleeing towards the forest. Around him, survivors with blue ribbons tied to their tunics looked around in confusion and shock at being alive.
A heartbeat, then the healers spread through the field, running towards those who could still scream. Matt’s breathing came in short, sharp gasps. He was alive! A sergeant walked with heavy steps through the mud, bending down to close the eyes of the dead. He heard the crows, still far away. He was alive! The putrid stink of the battlefield warred with the smell of lavender in his memory as the euphoria of survival lifted him to his feet. Cohesive, my ASS! I am alive!
Ahead, the mighty Dagger Mountains bore witness to their pointless squabbles. So tall they spread across his vision like a wall of white-capped stone, the vast mountain range separated Askat from Lyril. The range was said to be impassable, except through a narrow path much further to the north. For his entire life, the Daggers had been a presence in his mind, born of countless stories of monsters and struggles. Now the sun was dipping behind them, and the dark shadows of those giants reached towards the small group of tiny humans that were breathing in the smells of survival as the madness of battle settled in their souls.
The sergeant was closer now, moving towards a man lying on the ground, his leg soaked in blood. Matt walked forward to intercept him. “Let me,” he breathed as he reached down to close Jasper’s eyes. The sergeant gave him a nod of respect and placed a hand on his shoulder. A gesture of brotherhood to acknowledge that they were the lucky ones. For another day, another battle. Matt looked down at Jasper, and his hand tightened on his spear at the distant sound of a whetstone. “Thanks,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t have lived without you.” Then he turned around.
For the battle to come and to smell survival again, Matt made his way down the row of bodies. Wheat, he thought, taking in the yellow. This was a field of wheat. He drew his hands through the stalks, painting their tips in red and seeking a semblance of normalcy. Absent-mindedly, he noticed the strength of the plants already. Only June, and it looked ready to harvest. A crop that would make his sister smile all summer and keep them fed and warm throughout winter. Those who survived the wasting.
He wondered if the people who lived on this farm were now somewhere among the dead. It was a beautiful farm. Open to the sun from the south, the Dagger Mountains to the west, framing sunsets witnessed from the chair that he could see on the porch. Jagged pines, the hoots of owls, hedgehogs scratching. Good, deep soil for the crops. A place of life.
A perfect crop that would never be harvested. That they would burn before they moved on tonight, like so many fields behind them. A pyre to burn away the memories of their momentously insignificant battle. Perhaps a hundred men had woken this morning. Nervous boasting of the battle to come as they sharpened spears and ate their breakfast. A feast, a feast for crows.
He looked around and counted around twenty survivors. And the handful of their enemies who had taken refuge in the woods up ahead. He wished them well. He hoped they found shelter and food and happiness.
Lavender, he thought, and smelled survival. “Survival,” Jasper had said, is about training and equipment; and his thoughts strayed back to Jasper as he moved down the field, finding a new and better shield. His boots squelched again as he pulled them off; a brown sludge of blood and urine pouring out of them. He put on new boots that had belonged to a man larger than himself. Too big, but they were steel capped, and he had come across too many feet skewered by arrow and spear. A solid wool cape was drenched in blood, but that would wash out. Training and equipment. He pulled a helmet off a head that no longer needed it; her jaw hanging loose and her eyes empty. There! In her throat. That is the same tube as the old man had. Was that for breathing or for eating? His knowledge of the anatomy of throats increased by the minute.
The helmet fit him, and it was clean and smelled of new leather and only a little of the soap she had used that morning. Lavender, he thought as he spotted a hatchet. He unfastened the entire belt and clasped it around his own waist. The weight on his hip felt right.
Taking a firm grip on Jasper's spear, he rose to his feet and moved towards assembly. He reached the others on unsteady feet; his body, soul, and mind drained. He joined them around the fireplace, slumping to the ground as he took in the empty faces surrounding him. They sat together, watching the battlefield pyre swipe across the field. Huddled and shivering from the aftereffects of the battle. The June sun was now dipping behind the white caps of the Dagger Mountains, painting the sky with brilliant yellows and reds. It is beautiful. Who thought I would ever see the Daggers?
I wonder if half the stories told about them are true.
He laid down on the ground, fighting the tears and the cold, the sudden absence of adrenaline making him shiver and his temples throb with pain. Something was broken inside him. He was not the same man who had woken up this morning. But maybe, just maybe, he was still himself. Somewhere in there. He dreamed the colour red.