by Doug Kelly
The sun was bowing from the stage, receding from another performance above the violence of humankind. The leaves rustled softly in the breeze. The sinking sun cast its slanted golden rays through the branches. Then through the silence, there was a violent eruption of noise. This demonic growl came from not far away. Aton stopped. He heard more battle cries and the familiar pounding of swords on shields. His mind raced. It must be another battle. A final push by desperate men before the intermission from carnage that would follow the darkness after sundown. He intently listened for a while, trying to deny what he heard. Then he began to run in the direction of the ruckus. Realizing that he had just run from combat, heading back in that direction was almost unbelievable to him, but his curiosity was overwhelming. It suddenly occurred to him that compared to the noise of this clash of clans, he had fled from a mere brawl. After hearing the struggle of opposing forces, he was doubtful if he had experienced a real battle scene. He sped onward, wanting to peek from the edge of the forest to witness it for himself.
Sometimes thorn bushes formed a wall and tried to hold him back. Trees, confronting him, stretched out their branches and prohibited him to pass. It seemed that nature did not want him to venture back into the violence of war. It wanted to hold him in the loving embrace of a mother, protecting him from harm. He meandered around the obstacles and came to where he could see the location of another battle line. He looked back over his shoulder, but he only considered returning into the thicket for a moment. Looking forward, his eyes had an awestruck expression. He stared in the direction of the conflict then began to go forward again. As he walked, he wondered why he had the perverted desire to go near combat once more, to risk his life, and to look at corpses contorted in morbid positions at their last moments before death.
On his way back to the clash of clans, he entered a silent meadow that had recently been a field of violent combat. A dead warrior was prone on the ground, arms stretched wide as if he were still trying to surrender. Farther off, there was a group of four or five corpses. Two others had wrapped in each other’s arms and had apparently stabbed each other to death, ironically appearing like good friends as they hugged one another in their death pose. Ants had already found their way into and out of one dead soldier’s mouth. The hot sun had shone its spotlight on the carnage all day. All the stagnant death made him feel uncomfortable, so he hurried away. He came to a road from which he could see wounded men walking away from the latest skirmish, cursing with pains as they moved along. It was a steady current of the damned. So often, even the smallest wounds become infected, and brave soldiers died days later, after the battle was over. For most of those wounded warriors, their final battle, a battle against deadly infection, had already begun.
He got closer to the marching injured and saw the gray expression of death on a bald man who was staggering along the road. Blood tricked from the corner of his mouth and another wound had soaked his shirt a dark red color. The open spear wound in his chest whistled as he walked, or more accurately, as he stumbled along, panting heavily to breathe. He moved as if his feet were heavy stones. Aton thought that he might have recognized the bald man from the group with which he had marched to battle. He was not sure if he knew the man, but was certainly not in the mood for nostalgic reminiscing of the recent battle from which he had fled. He thought it was best to try to avoid someone that might recognize him.
A wagon approached from behind. As it passed, he could see that it was full of wounded men. A man in the back of the cart suffered from what appeared to be a severe leg injury. He yelled for the driver to stop the horses. On the ride to convalescence, some of the wounded had already died. The injured man used his good leg to kick the dead bodies off the wagon. They fell with a dull thud and the walking dead used the fallen corpses as stepping stools to take their turn riding on the cart. The man with the reins whistled sharply and the horse continued down the road, pulling a wagon full of bleeding men waiting to die.
Aton fell back in the procession until the stumbling wounded man, who he thought might recognize him, was not in sight. Then he started to go on with the others. Open wounds and a mob of bleeding men surrounded him. He knew that he did not fit in with this crowd, so he started to walk with a fake limp. Even with the false limp, he walked with the speed of a healthy man. He slowed his pace, looked at the ground with a sullen expression, and saw clots of blood had covered the dusty trail, but none of the blood was from him. He was afraid some commander might gallop by and see that he was in fine shape, behead him as a deserter from battle, and pike his head on a spear tip to display on the roadside as an example of the fate awaiting a coward. His limp was not convincing enough, so he took a calculated risk and rushed ahead to find the bald wounded man. Aton located him, went to his side, swung the man’s bloody arm over his shoulder, and helped him on their mutual way, at the slow pace of the injured. With only an expression, a quick but slight smile, the man thanked Aton and leaned his weight onto him. Aton’s imagination had tricked him. He did not know the injured man.
Battle trauma had fixed the wounded man's eyes into a distant stare. The shadows of his face were deepening and his lips tightened, as if they were holding a sigh of great misery. While the man leaned onto Aton as they went down the road, the dying man walked as if he could feel stiffness in the movements of his body, as if he was taking care not to provoke his injuries. As Aton guided the way, the wounded man seemed to be looking for a certain place by the road, but it all looked the same, an endless dirt road packed with dying men flanked by fields of grass and shrubbery.
Aton could feel the warm blood trickle on him and noticed a combination of old and new blood stained his clothes black and red. Suddenly, as the two hobbled on, a tremor overcame the injured warrior. His face appeared a more ashen color. He clutched Aton's arm tightly and groaned. Then he began to speak in a shaking whisper. “I’m going home.” The wounded man lifted his arm free from Aton’s support and stumbled forward on his own. Turning his head swiftly, Aton saw the man stagger and stumble toward a little clump of bushes. That was where he fell and died after leaving Aton camouflaged with smeared blood, which would hide him in a group of the wounded.
As the march of the injured continued, he became aware that the roar of the battle was growing louder. Men filtered from the woods and the fields became dotted with combatants again. As they reached the peak of a hill, he noticed that the road was now an awful mass of wagons and men. Whips cracked and bit into horses’ backs. One angry horse reared after the crack of the whip and jolted the wagon forward so violently that the driver fell from it, still holding the reins in one hand and whip in the other. A wooden wheel bounced over his body, and he groaned with broken ribs as he lay writhing in pain on the dusty trail.
Aton felt comfortable where he was, camouflaged with real blood in a line of retreating injured men. He sat down at the roadside and watched them pass. He felt vindicated for leaving battle, accompanied by so many others doing the same. Then a column of very healthy soldiers marched past. They obviously were not retreating, and then Aton realized that the trail did not lead back to Acadia, just to another confrontation.
After sitting and regaining his senses, he realized that he had a scorching thirst. His face was so dry and grimy that he thought he could feel his skin crack. Each bone of his body had an ache in it, and felt like it could break with each movement. His feet were like two sores. His stomach was calling loudly for food. His vision blurred, there was a sharp feeling in his gut, and when he tried to walk his head bobbed like a balloon on a stick. Weak from thirst and hunger, he did not feel like a warrior. The shadows of real fighters had just swept over his body as they marched past him. He now conceded that it was possible that he would never prove himself in battle and become a commander of men. As he sat there, he wished to know who was winning. He felt like a moth circling a flame around which the firelight captivated it and hypnotized it so that the fluttering insect would travel directly into its fascination, straight
to its death.
The column of warriors that had marched past the wounded men was barely out of Aton's sight before he saw waves of Grinald’s men come sweeping out of the woods and down through the fields. As they got closer, he could see the expression of terror in their wide eyes. It was like a stampede of wild horses. He was petrified once more. These warriors were retreating, so that meant a losing battle was lurching toward him. It was over. An evil war machine was coming toward his comrades to swallow them whole. The warlord’s commanders had not expected the town that they were advancing on to have received strong reinforcements from a distant clan, but they had. As Grinald’s men retreated, they tripped blindly because of the increasing darkness.
The first warriors to retreat had darted quickly around him as they ran away. Soon, he was in the midst of others withdrawing. They hurdled over obstacles and dashed all around him to get away. Their blanched faces shone in the dusk. They seemed, for the most part, to be very robust men, most likely all swordsmen from the frontlines of the battle. Aton turned from one to another of them as they ran along, and he asked about the battle. They did not seem to notice him. Aton, after rushing around and desperately begging for answers from the reckless bands of disappearing warriors, finally grasped a fleeing man by the arm. They swung around and met face to face. That was when Aton saw the man’s deep scar from a sword that had gashed into his forehead and cheek, in a straight line across his eye. That was why he had gotten so close to the fleeing man and had been able to grab his arm. He was blind in the eye closest to Aton. The blade had split his flesh open to the bone and had splayed his eye in half. The thick clear liquid that had spilled forth from his wounded eye socket had cleared a place free of blood and dust on his upper cheek, in the shape of a crescent. The strong but half-blind man did not stop, and dragged Aton with him several paces before Aton let go. Aton touched his own cheek in sympathy for the man, and felt surrogate pain when he did.
Aton hurried away in the dusk. The day had faded, and now he could barely distinguish the ground. The alley of retreat now lay lifeless. There were dead horses, overturned wagons, and more corpses. War had been like a falling tree that had cast its sharp splinters everywhere. A dragging weariness overcame him. His head hung forward. Hunger and thirst stooped his shoulders. His feet shuffled along the ground, dragging behind them a ball and chain of despair. He was so tired that he could barely tolerate it. He felt like lying down right there in the grass, or finding refuge somewhere else. He had no food, so his stomach made the decision for him, and he moved along with his ball and chain of despair. Before long, he saw a campfire and a familiar banner silhouetted by the flickering light.
His body cried from exhaustion and pain. Those shouting ailments from his limbs and joints forced him to seek a place with food and rest, at whatever cost. Aton went slowly toward the fire in hope that he might find a familiar face. He made his way toward the flames. He could see dancing black shadows of the forms of men, cast about by the flickering red light of the campfire. He stepped over the dark cocoons of sleeping men scattered on the ground as he went forward. He stepped cautiously, like a man unsure of where a bear trap lay, waiting to rip his ankle from his leg.
From the darkness, he heard a man ask, “Is that you, Aton?”
He was not sure how to reply. He simply said, “Yes,” and hoped no one was sharing stories of battle, separation, and reunion. He had not yet thought how to explain his disappearance from the hill.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
He had found his way into a camp full of familiar faces around a campfire. The day had been rough for everyone, so it was easy to avoid a conversation with those tired and listless bodies that had already surrounded him in silence. Consumed in their thoughts, no one spoke, but in their minds, each person was reliving the day’s events. Overall, the battle had been a horrific experience; no one was in the mood for celebration. Combat stress and fatigue were working their way through the camp like a plague. The men simply stared into the hypnotic flickering light.
After realizing that the same trance had also caught him, Aton tried to shake it away from his mind. He knew that he needed sleep, so he left the fire ring to find an open spot on the ground, away from the mesmerizing flames. After a short while, the things around him began to take form. He saw that men, sprawling in every imaginable position, cluttered the ground in the deep shadows. Glancing narrowly into the more distant darkness, he caught occasional glimpses of faces that loomed pallid and ghostly, lit with flickering firelight. Those faces expressed in their lines the deep blankness of the tired warriors, appearing like men drunk with ale.
On the other side of the fire, Aton watched a man sleeping. The man had his back against a tree where he had fallen asleep, and was somehow maintaining that position, delicately balanced against the trunk, seemingly ready to topple. His face was like the others, dusty and stained. His lower jaw hung down as if gasping at a horrific scene unfolding in a nightmare. He was the image of an exhausted warrior after a feast of battle. He had gone to sleep with his sword in his arms. Those two slumbered in an embrace like a married couple on their honeymoon, but the field of combat was where they had already consummated their relationship.
He observed other soldiers within the gleam of rose and orange light from the burning logs in the campfire. Some were snoring and some were as quiet and still as if they were dead. All the shoes had mud and dust from marching on the dirt roads, and ragged pants and shirts showed gashes from running through walls of thorn bushes.
The fire cackled melodically. Light smoke wafted upwards like ghostly spirits leaving a graveyard. Overhead the trees’ foliage moved softly. The leaves, with their faces turned upward, reflected shifting hues of silver. In the firelight, the leaves of the silver maple were true to their name. He was thirsty and hungry, so he went to fill his gourd canteen and look for a bite to eat. Directly above, through a window in the forest canopy, he could see a handful of stars splashed, like glittering jewels, on the black canvas of the night sky. Aton found the camp’s water, filled his gourd, then tilted his head back and held it long to his lips. The water caressed his blistered throat. A small brick of hardtack was all he could find to eat, but it calmed his stomach.
Ready for sleep, but uncomfortable from the chill in the dark forest, he quickly jogged back to where he had seen a fallen horse. He took the wool blanket from the dead animal’s back and then returned to where he would sleep. On the ground by the crackling fire, the comforting warmth of the horse blanket enveloped him. His head fell forward on his crooked arm and his weighted lids went softly down over his eyes. He gave a long sigh, curled his body under the wool blanket, and in a moment, slumbered like his comrades who had spread about the forest floor, resembling broken tree branches after a storm.
When Aton woke the next morning, it seemed to him that it all had been just a very bad nightmare. He rubbed his blurry eyes, then quickly realized that it was a nightmare, but not from a dream. He was still there in this foul place, waiting his turn to be marched to battle and maybe his death. A light fog hovered low to the ground, ironically seeming to wrap them in a heavenly blanket while they lay in the midst of hell. A faint red glow of the rising sun, signaling an impending splendor in the eastern sky, captured his attention as he lay on the hard ground. The campfire had died during the night, and chilly dew had dampened his face, so he curled farther down under the blanket. He stared for a while at the leaves overhead, and listened as the condensing dewdrops fell to the forest floor like gentle rain.
With the first light of day, the noise of battle began again and silenced the call of a mourning dove in mid-song. It was the clamor of forward troops skirmishing as they tried to assess the condition and morale of their enemy. Around him were the groups of men that he had faintly seen the previous night. The soft, red light of dawn made the exhausted features of the dusty warriors appear burned, and it had dressed the skin of the soldiers with a shade of death, making their jumbled limbs seem pulseless and de
ceased. After his vision had cleared, his eyes first swept over this motionless mass of men, spread thickly on the ground, with ashen faces and in abnormal postures. His bitter mind interpreted that place as the foyer to the house of death. For an instant, he believed that he was in the house of the dead, and he did not dare move because of a haunting fear that those corpses might rise, crying and screaming. He shook his head and tried to evict the morbid image from his mind. He heard someone tossing a few split logs onto the embers of last night’s fire, and then turned his head to see a man trying to coax a flame back from the ashes. A few other figures moved in the fog, and he heard the hard cracking of axe blows.
Suddenly, there was a call of percussing drums. A distant ox horn blew faintly. Similar sounds, varying in strength, came from near and far through the forest. The horns called to each other like hungry wolves in the night, trying to unite the pack for another hunt. The body of men in the woods slowly woke. Tired heads lifted, voices began to murmur, and tangled limbs unraveled. Ashen faces hid behind fists that twisted slowly against dark eye sockets. Aton sat up and decided it was time to rise.
The fire came back to a blaze as the freshly chopped wood hissed and crackled under the growing flames. An older man, a veteran of many battles, brought fresh meat to the fire. He sliced and skewered strips of it and handed them to the hungry men. It sizzled in the heat, waking Aton’s hungry stomach from a deep slumber. He devoured his share, but it had a peculiar taste, a taste that was not familiar to him. After finishing his portion, he looked around to see from which supply wagon the man had acquired the meat, but he could see none. He really wanted to toast some bread on the fire, but as hungry as he was, he felt like he could eat anything. He asked the nearest person, “Is there any bread? Hardtack will do.”