Weekly Drabble #307: Days Like Today (Patreon)

What's this?! An actual short story?!?! It's madness! Madness, I tells ya!

This week's prompt is 'a beautiful day on the battlefield' from Krystal Boone, giving us a little ditty about just that. Hope you all enjoy!

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Days Like Today:

It was a lovely morning, Sir Avenhart thought as he lay dying on the battlefield. The sun was eking up above the horizon, turning the sky to a breathtaking melody of colours, dominated by red. A red dawn; the old wives’ tales said that such a morning meant blood had been spilled during the night. He almost chuckled, but he didn’t have the strength. Well, it had been correct on that account.

A red dawn also meant a storm was coming, or so said sailors. They were not far from the coast, so perhaps that was true. Sir Avenhart knew he wouldn’t see the truth of that. It was a miracle he had lived through the night. Many others had not, their cries and pleas for help fading one by one. There were but few voices now. Most had either passed during the cloudless night or were like him, had no energy left to do so.

Broken banners, bodies and wreckage littered these once-green fields of wildflowers, turning them into a brown and red abattoir where two armies had clashed, grinding one another to ruin. There had been no true victor; both forces had had to withdraw, neither strong enough to press the advantage upon the other, leaving their dead and dying in the field.

As the mists slowly cleared, Sir Avenhart could see that the scavengers had come. Not the crows and carrion birds; they had been circling since the last standard disappeared beyond the horizon, diving down to feast on the banquet laid out before them. No, it was far fouler vermin that had arrived: men and women in rags and worn clothes. Peasants come to loot the dead, to steal from the bodies of their kinsmen and nobles, to defile the bodies of those who had lain down their lives for them. They spoke in hushed whispers, afraid that a raised voice might carry through the dissipating fog.

Their fear was well-grounded, and justly deserved. Few soldiers took the looting of their dead lightly; Sir Avenhart had seen battlefields decorated with the impaled bodies and heads of would-be looters, their remains left as a warning to all other carrion-feeders. Here, there was no one to stop the desecration and as the sun rose, so did the bravery of the thieves. They began talking louder, laughing and joking as they stripped the dead, looting coin purses and boots from their fellow peasants, men from the levies supplied by towns and villages to protect their nation. When they found a knight, they wasted no time in stripping the man of armour and weapons and often clothes, dumping the naked body back into the mud with a chuckle.

When they found someone who was still alive, rather than seek help, they quickly removed such complications with stolen daggers, hammers they’d brought for just such purposes or even the nearest rock. Sir Avenhart watched a woman as old as his mother cup the face of Sir Edelvin as he pleaded for water, only to slit his throat with a short, sharp knife and wait for him to burble out his life before unfastening the officer’s fine helmet and putting it in her bag.

He wanted to rage at them, to rise from where he lay and charge at them with sword in hand, to drive them from the feel like rats before a hound, but he could not. He could not even speak, his life dripping away bit by bit. He hoped he would die before they reached him. To die in battle was one thing, but to be casually murdered by these filth, when he and so many others had laid down their lives for them...

His hope was not to be, as a pair of the scavengers, one hooded and masked and the other squat, lumpen and missing his front teeth from some previous brawl caught sight of Sir Avenhart and his fine armour.

“This ‘un’s still alive,” the masked man said. “Look at ‘im.”

“Not fer long. That gut wound’ll already killed ‘im. Time fer a spot o’ mercy, I say.”

“Aye. Mercy is the godly way. And I call that sword o’ his.”

“You and yer swords, mate. Lookit at what his got ‘im, eh?”

“Worth a pretty penny, though. Raslin pays well for a good blade. More than he should, but I won’t argue with the coin.”

“Aye, aye. So whose turn is it?”

“I mercied the last one. This ‘un all yours.”

“Right,” the gap-toothed man said with a nod, squatting next to Sir Avenhart. He drew a well-used hunter’s knife from his belt. “Just you hold still, yer eminence. Won’t hurt but a touch.” He grabbed the knight’s head and turned it to expose his neck.

Sir Avenhart tried to raise his arms to defend himself, to curse the peasants for their crimes, to beg for help but he could do none of those. Only a rough rattle that might have been words escaped him as he cast his eyes to the rising sun and took in its beauty for the last time.

The man had been right. It only hurt a little.