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Fantasy

A blinding white light tore through the darkness. A pair of eyes driven by an irrepressible urge started to open, flinching, gradually and painfully, encrusted in a sticky coating of warm blood and wet muck.

Two pupils dilated inside blood shot eyes trying to focus on a point in the grim dark sky, being able only to concentrate on a deafening ringing that seemed to emanate from deep within himself.

The man let out a confused groan of frustration shutting his eyes tightly, struggling to stay conscious through the throbbing pain in his head and a total buzzing sensation throughout his body. He suddenly and violently coughed from deep within his tired aching lungs, expelling blood and phlegm over the grimy black leather collar, fringed in crude patterns, tied in the middle with faded tassels that enclosed his neck, protecting it from blisters caused by his breast plate.

He groaned again and slowly raised his ironclad arm from the cold sludge beneath him. As he slowly arched his arm over toward his face cold mud rolled down his iron arm and dripped onto his torso.

Gingerly he moved his cold hand to examine the source of the pain. Being dazed and confused state, he ran his fingers carelessly across his numb clammy face and into a large bleeding gash on above his right eye. Immediately his hand was violently flung away in agony from the gash back to the mud-covered ground followed by a horrifying scream of pain that seemed to make but a dull phantom of the true sound.

As he regained partial consciousness he could feel fine ice-cold drizzle falling gently in the wind upon his sodden body, as it fell upon his head it helped to quench his thirst and lessen his fiery pain.

He gradually became aware of the grim shattered corpses of the deceased lying over and around him. The foul, rancid, stench of death and pain lingered all about him causing him to gag. Violent shivers bore deep down inside his gut leaving him tingling with fear, he didn’t know why he was lying, wounded and encased in heavy iron armour on his back in a mud-covered field.

A few voices could be heard a small number of feet away, quarrelling in a foreign tongue. Their voices gradually became louder and more aggressive until the tone suddenly changed to that of agreement.

The warrior slowly turned his head towards the voices and opened one of his olive green eyes once more. His vision was blurred some what from the blow to his head and obscured by the abundant dead and their leering faces, but he could make out a dozen or so people, dressed in common clothes slowly creeping about the bodies cowering intently toward the ground as if looking for something.

One in the distance suddenly stopped and hastily called over another, they frantically talked to each other, the second then bent down, pulled out a wooden hammer and crudely struck downwards, this was followed by a muffled scream, and a shower of blood. The man stood up, wiped off the blood and maliciously laughed to himself.

The warrior started to shake with anxiety and fear, he knew had to flee, or he too would suffer the same fate. Frantically but cautiously he sifted through the nearby muck for a weapon while still on his back until his left hand bumped into the outstretched lifeless arm of a fallen comrade, clutching tightly a small simple iron dagger. He pulled back the stiff slippery fingers, freed the weapon from its grasp, hid it under himself without a sound and returned to his original position with his eyes closed.

A fearsome balding man wielding a small woodcutters axe neared him. His beady eyes bulged with purpose and his head dripped with cold rain and blood, the remnants of his grey hair wisped about madly in the icy wind. The warriors able muscles tensed, his grip on the dagger tightened and he readied for violent action.

The balding man casually walked over towards the fallen warrior, splashing him with muddy water and knelt down next to him. His rank body odour could be smelled from a distance but up close it was stifling. He lent his fat head forward, his dark eyes searched for signs of life in the wounded warrior.

The man noticed the warriors still bleeding wound, he muttered something to himself and readied his axe for a fatal strike, but he was too late. The warriors intense eyes opened in a flash and flared wildly as he brutally jammed the knife into side of the mans fat neck, he grimaced as he pulled down on the knifes wooden handle, severing his windpipe. The man gasped desperately for air as he descended heavily to the ground clutching at his throat.

The warrior sprung into action

Runs away, night time, woods, wolves come, knife out.

Comes out of the wood, meets someone

........

The thudding of a galloping. Over the crest of the hill in front of them galloped a cavalry scout, riding full pelt, kicking up a long his gold edged ornamental uniform glinted and shimmered in the sunset like a halo as he neared them

In the distance a tiny flickering light could be made out through the gloom, followed by another, and another until a total of seven could be seen in a staggered line with assorted smaller lights glittering at the rear descending upon the squalid collection of tents. As the lights neared, they could be made out as the swinging lanterns fixed onto the heads of the wagons and the smouldering torches of the walking wounded, the grim faced soldiers were illuminated in the eerie pale glow like phantoms marching into hell, they all new the pain and anguish to come, far worse than any dealt by the enemy.