Random stories

The coming rain had a smell to it. The sky a certain blue-grey hue. If you were a particularly in tune individual you might even feel the pressure difference as the front rolled in through the land. All these features seemed to be the opening moves to the strange informal dance of life. Battle was in many ways the same. There was a set of features which announced its imminence in camp – the smell of oil and steady scraping of blades against whetstones, the ceasing of raucous laughter and conversation, and strange weight which seemed to impart itself onto seemingly every man’s chest.

Gilred pondered this as he sat, back resting against the bark of a sturdy old oak. Was every man unknowingly dancing along with fate, clumsily planting and adjusting their feet to a phantom melody which they tried to ascertain from the most obvious events in their life?

He sighed, his breath puffing lightly in the cold dawn of the dark winter morning. Groaning, he pressed his hands into the hard packed dirt and rose on knees which ached far too much for a man of his age. As he began his steady plod into the expansive camp, which began moving with a heightened sense of urgency, he tried to remember what he was before all this.

He’d always pondered life – his parents joked that he might join the great minds at Anthium as they sipped wine and delicately poured over the mysteries of life. Gilred thought of what that place must be like. He imagined a courtyard, stones warmed by a pleasant yellow sun and a neatly groomed garden. In his mind it might smell of lillies.

Getting drafted into the king’s army had somewhat stymied that notion. Perhaps it was in some form of misguided guilt he pondered life the way he did now, as if doing so might be paying a penance to the dead and discarded dreams his parents had held for him. Then again, perhaps in some ways it was the duty of every soldier. Should not those who dispelled life have some notion as the significance of it? With each human life supposedly meaning so much, then was each fatal swing of the blade not a grand event of its own right?

“Gilred!” shouted his platoon sergeant, “Get your squad ready to move. Weather is rolling in soon. We need to be in our position before the whole damned field isn’t anything more than a pit of mud.”

Gilred hurried his steps. Dying never struck him as a pleasant experience. He assumed it would only be made less palatable by doing it covered in mud.

After shouldering his way through the bustling camp he arrived at his platoon’s staging area. His squad awaited him, many fidgeting nervously as they stood in their full battle dress. Looking at them, Gilred couldn’t help but see a ragged group of boys with only two or three truly grown men among them. A number of their pieces of armor seemed to be poorly fit, and at least a quarter of them still were trying to adjust belts and straps in a desperate attempt to get their newly imparted equipment to sit properly along their forms.

*And why me?* thought Gilred. *Why a boy who never dreamed of being a soldier, who never swung a stick in his youth imagining a claymore, was chosen to lead this group of what may as well be children themselves into battle?*

Deep within himself, though, Gilred knew the answer. It was true he’d never wanted this. Before his first fray he’d even plotted his escape. His heart had longed so badly for home at that point it felt that it might simply implode within his chest, never giving his enemy the chance to damage it themselves. Yet… he hadn’t run. When the armies clashed, the song of steel enchanted him. The language of steel spoke into his ears as if it had been waiting for someone to truly listen to it for so long. And he had listened. Then, he spoke. It seemed all other tongues of man were made obsolete in that moment, nothing more than lesser figments of the only language which had ruled over the land as long as men had walked.

“First squad!” Gilred roared over the din in a voice which seemed far too weathered for his youthful features, “March!”

The makeshift band of conscripts doing their best to imitate soldiers began marching nervously into what was becoming a looming storm. In that field Gilred could already see it – a place where darkness bore over and smothered light. A place where mud and blood would meet and body and soul would be separated. A place that felt more like home than anyplace he had ever known.

He wondered what men who sipped wine in warm courtyards would make of that.

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Submitted by Charlie_Romeo_Writes on Mon, Jun 05, 2023 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

When the king's army drafted you, you planned on faking your death in battle and waiting for a chance to return home. You were so good at fighting that you never got the chance and just kept getting promoted.