Fall

A Story by lrigD

A moment on the battlefield.

They’re fighting, struggling, wondering what they’re doing here, wondering who they will take back as a limp body. Death is not picky today: in fact, it has not been for the past few weeks.

Although weeks is not the right word: it’s more like months, or years. It feels like forever.

I see my little girl, my best friends, my parents, my siblings. We’re all fighting for the same thing.

But only one can win.

And today, it won’t be us.

I see the silver glint of a sword in front of me, and it brings me out of my funk. I have a battle to fight; whether to win or to lose, it has to be fought.

My own weapons are smeared with blood, dirt and grease, and I can hardly hold on to them. Around me, I see similar situations. Nathanua is fighting with one arm hanging limply by his side: I rush over and fend his enemy off with him, but it’s no use. The man just turns around and attacks someone else.

Nathanua looks at me, for just a moment -it’s all we can spare- and sees the doubt. He opens his mouth, but before he can, somebody lunges at him from behind and I can only just move him out of the way.

And we’re fighting again.

I lose sight of him, and for a while I can see nothing but my enemy, one at the time, and I can hear nothing but the clangs of metal on metal and the screams of men in agony. My own harsh breathing does no longer reach my ears: I am deaf for my own sounds, insensitive to my own pain.

Nothing penetrates me.

Has it been minutes, hours, days?

When the fighting stops, I am lost. My arms are raised, automatically, instinctively. With nothing to do, they fall limply by my side. I have no more strength to raise them again.

The eerie silence is telling. I see dead bodies around me, a sea of blood and hair and men, lying or crawling. Some are still alive. I know it would me most merciful to kill them: but I do no longer have the simple force to do so.

A few men are, like me, scattered, searching, resting and waiting.

Nobody I know.

My family, my friends: what became of them? Nathanua? In this battlefield, they are impossible to find.

A sharp stab of pain brings me to my knees. I look down: a deep wound is in my leg, oozing blood and only then do I see that my leg is shaking -my whole body is- and I can no longer stand.

I fall.