Earlier there had been one man, the straw headed man, whose eyes so sorely weeping, turned his head and was looking at them, the body which had laid on the roadside. Beforehand, he had been crawling. Reaching. Desperate. Throwing his body towards the fields like a crazed man as his life source slowly drained out of his body. “Haz..” The man had called, mouth too chapped to yell help. He withered, and soon he would remain still, brown eyes closing and the light snuffed out. Orto concocted a story of the dead man’s life before he said a prayer and went back to the mondered way of collecting grains. For a moment, he had seen open gates and doors without locks and without falcons or molted goshawks, yet it vanished and again all there was was the waving serene barley. Small moments of time not tainted by blood or dirt or tears; holy in their own way, until out of the darkness a voice would bellow calling you to work.
The amber waves of grain swelled and rolled like hung up laundry in the early dawn breeze. The sun’s head had not yet come out but briefly one could make out the darkened forms of those who worked the fields. They moved about like slumbering machines yet at the same time, seemed as if they too were a part of the natural dance of the barley grains. One could hear the gentlest murmur of song from the baritone voices of the men as they began to plow the few empty acres of frozen field for the new season.
The wolf was the only thing that moved in that desolate plain of grain in the distance, it’s paws soaking into the weeds of the water. The sun twirls its body around the surface and swims across like waves of tadpoles. The wolf lowers its head to the water and sniffs, recoiling as it realizes that the water is soaked with tears and blood. It’s majestic white fur becomes stained, and it is no longer pure. The wolf neared the body of the dead man and a gunshot rang out causing it to skitter away from the corpse. One could hear the whooping of men, “Adda boy! Get ‘em! Get dah stinking scoundrel.” Hunger had already crawled its way into the bellies of the unbound farm workers and Orto raised a hand to the nearby man who held the musket. “Leaves her alones now. ‘Tis work the Brothers want finished. Seamus will be cooking later; something better then the mangy dog.” The man grumbled; “Orto but…” before trailing off. He turned his eyes and met the wolves from far away before it scattered across the dirt road.
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A dusty road extended its way across the narrow strips of golden land, the wind swirling copper plumes of dust like lasso’s in the sky, backdropped against the gray twist of clouds. In the days of The Mire, people worked tirelessly, toiling away their days to fill the coffers of those with actual authority. It befell in the days of darkened Mire, when he was king of all Hadmark, and so reigned, that there was a mighty queen in Agder that held war against him long time. One man stood still in that moving mass of the natural world, straw - colored head peeking out against the wall of brown, deliberately picking grain by grain excessed from the burlap sacks thrown over the broader shoulders of older men. Troops periodically, like the surprised sporadic movement of a dog in heat, marched down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the remaining trees. The few remaining trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the monastic land. It was the fortieth week of working day and night in the monastery’s sward, and the hardened ground nearly equated the hardened stares of those that worked it, the copper blood still fresh by the roadside, seeping black when it congealed on top of the body of the Earth.
He squatted on the ground, fingernails torn from picking up each and every small seed with care, refusing to squander even one of the ninety nine that had been left behind by the burlap sack. A firm hand made it’s way to his shoulder and squeezed through the thickness of a burgundy tunic as he paused, “Orto, ye do not have to pick up each grain. Father Gilmore said that it was enough to have the sacks we have been collecting before the entire soil layer froze over for the coming ice period. We only need enough to feed the brothers through the frost period.”. It was comforting to know that someone did not want him on his hands and knees, but as Orto looked up to the warm roughened face of William, and saw the thinness near his ears, he knew that each grain mattered more than William would let on for the brothers so he murmured a response “Brother William ‘tis fine with myself for doing this is God’s work…perhaps.”. The war between the King of Hadmark and the Queen of Adger, a woman that was rarely seen in public unless it was service to the poor or a victory march of a feudal army, had been raging on for ten years and slowly the coffers of even the monasteries were beginning to drain. So much so that Orto’s filial piety had kicked into overgear, and he could be seen walking to the fields immediately after Laud, head already dusted with the dirt of the road.
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Their monastery sat isolated on the environs of the temporary military commune of East Landini, the barracks rising high into the morning fog with the abbey overlooking it from the mountain face like that of a concerned mother fussing over their injured child. Ice storms would soon begin to lash against the worn stone face of the abbey, shards shifting their way in slashes to the barrack below, a world of constant noise. Fires burned throughout the night, smoke rising, carrying the scents of war; destruction, defeat, victory, life, and death and the cries of those who had survived for the next day. Drink would be the only thing that could quiet the raucous calls below for always it was the clash of swords, of metal against metal, of weapons against humans that rose from its rust colored depths. The dust descended upon all, no face allowed to be brewed or wiped clean, and those who worked the lands would stumble to their bed, like men made of clay, a thing breathed to life. Oil soaked into the fingers of those who had been working the plows in the field, an occasional alarm noise rising from one of the draft horses when they were given a firmer nudge. More men were seen clearing the thistles from the empty plot, the silver lip of the scythe arching through the air before ending in a deafening thwack against the base of it’s root. It was quiet, except for these periodic punches of sound, already the dead body of the man by the road forgotten as the living attempted to survive.
It was the clash of weapons, the crismon of war, the flash of metal. Nobody ever talked about how loud war was, but it was, and it haunted you even after the morning battle was over. Yelling. Screaming. Crys for their mother. Always, the cries for their mother. And as the rain mingled with the blood, the fields turned into vast oceans of water downed red, rolling over the dead bodies as if to carry them away. The weakling trees that stood standing rose up and out of the ground, their branches spindling and weaving into coffins for the corpses of the crows that cawed hauntingly over the buried. No one would venture out to bury them. Not yet. Maybe not ever, because already they were being scavenged as those who survived disappeared amongst the wind, amongst the wood of the forest. Only the living could benefit from the dead, and so boots would be taken, and shields, and chest plates anything to keep the struggling with their eyes open another day. Anything to see the lads of Adger fight on. Anything to go home to your mother, not your lover. War waits for no man, not even God. It steamrolls on like a beast, running over all its obstacles, until even its maker has been worn down to nothing less than a nub.
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Orto raised his hand against the evening sun as the fog began to roll out across the valley field like a tide. “Do you reckon we’ll have to clear the body again this time, Wills?”. In reply William turned his face away from the road, “I don’t be thinkin it’ll have make himself into the afterlife any other way. You know how it’s be. They leave the dirty work to the holy man.”. With a grunt, he released Orto’s shoulder and shifted away, hulking frame sinking into the mixture of dust and fog, towards the body. Anyone could disappear in it and never return, the most likely reason why the soldiers had decided to kill the man there, or perhaps they were just hoping that God was watching while they did it. But who was Orto to worry about the affairs of the dead when there were so many problems amongst the living? He crouched and ran his hands back through the dirt, digging burrows in thin lines amongst the weeds until his fingernail snagged on a stray rock and he bled. The scarlet drop caked its way through the darkened rust colored dust on his hand, mingling with the dirt, before dropping onto the ground. He ran his bleeding finger across his teeth in annoyance, the blood streaking across the white, before disappearing into the interior cavern.
In times, when the smell of sweat and death did not fill the air, life was still held back by the fingers of those who had become ghosts. They gripped relentlessly, because even the spirits knew the winds of change were sweeping through the valley, through East Landini, through the monastery, through the fields, through the kingdom, through Orto. He stood up and stretched his arms wide over his head, allowing his gaze to rest on William before they rose to the sky.
The first snow was beginning to fall.
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