On War
Crimson mixed with the blades of fine grass. Each slim carefully cultivated line of small plant life, suddenly balking beneath an onslaught of ruby splatters and showering hordes of thick red. Dark puddles flowed across the earth and rock strewn over the meadow length. Blotches of dark or bright red spitting over the heavy trunks of gnarled elms and willows.
The heavy sounds of rending flesh and shattering bone fill the air faces lost in a sudden up swing of metallic retribution. Innards spilt across the ground in a mirage of artistic chaos.
Throats shorn in half with the quick twist of a dagger or sword tip, streaking along the currents of fresh forest air.
Clashes of blade upon blade rang amidst the battle haze, metal grating and trembling within the grind of edged lock up. Gritted teeth and tensed muscle coinciding with the sharp shower of sparks, from an armoured body.
Feathery shafts lit the horizon, falling like black rain among both sides. The reaper, scything his calling throughout the lines and phalanxes. Arrow heads splitting bone and flesh. Armour and links of chain mail torn asunder with their momentum streaked journeys. Wooden shafts, slim and supple, broken in Twain under the cleanse and quick stitch of a wound.
The stagnant air lay rancid with piss and dung, bodies tumbling to the earth in hordes and dozens or sinking into the watered much of the latrine trenches. Blood mingled with earth, and invaded the senses. Acrid stenches filled nostrils , and set eyes to watering.
All the while the dark and damned waged their turns, each coming and going with the tide of slaughter below.
No one stopped to eat or drink, save for the water casks carried near the rear of the lines.
No one stopped for the dawn.
War was like that. It always was. Swift and true as the morning tide of oceans call, the front lines careened over the blood soaked grasses, throwing themselves at each other like banshees to the wind.
Screams and cries of agony tore the fabric of serenity this once peaceful glade held. Already the animals and Vegetation had been picked clean and left sparse.
Food for the army.
Already trees and forests surrounding once lush with foliage, the grasslands beneath once primal and unfettered, not became few and far between, many trees hacked down and torn asunder to create the weapons of mass destruction. Grasslands trampled and turned to mud and grime beneath the tread of he armies.
Weapons of Destruction for the lines.
Already eyes of hundreds lay Dead and dying. The light that had once illuminated so many shades, for reasons a many: Lust, Love, Rage, Hatred, Revenge, Joy…
Hope.
Already they Faded.
For what…No one has told me as yet.
And I doubt I will ever understand why.
Return
