Author's note: This is a original fiction of mine. I did this out of the blue and am wondering if it is worth continuing. I hope people will write a few reviews to let me know if it is worth continuing.
Not beta read.
-----Main Story-----
---Chapter One: Hell ---
I look to the sky and see how the dark blue and purple sky slowly turns red, orange and white. A shadow blocks my view on the sun. A hawk flies over my head. It shrieks out loud and brings me back to the present.
I feel the breath of the person next to me. I smell their sweat, their fear. The misty morning hour damps the air so all of their smells stays close to the ground. I taste the salt of my own sweat while I smell the acidic urine that runs down someone's pants.
The breath loud and heavily grabbing hold onto their weapons. My gaze from returns from the unreachable sky above to where I stand now.
I am in the third row of a platoon consisting of old men, women, and children. Pretty much everyone from my village is being dragged to the front line. These barbarians don't care if we are children, girls, boys it matters not to them. Old people like father Peter, they told him to use his crane as a weapon.
The others are no better, forks and sticks, maybe a scythe if we are lucky. I am not so lucky, in my left a stone the size of my small children hand, in my right a wooden stick I picked up while they dragged us to the front line.
And now this platoon of misfits and frightened people are on the very front. To the back are the horse riding barbarians. They wield sword and spears, but their main weapon is their bow.
When they invaded, they charged through the gates shooting flaming arrows at anything and everything, leaving behind but a scorched village.
We are but a small village no more than five hundred people. We screamed and ran for our lives or tried to hide under stools and tables, maybe under a bed as well. But they all found us, all of the children. We were easy prey, we just cried and screamed as one by one our parents, brothers and sister fell.
They showed mercy or so we thought, now only to put us to death in front of their enemies. Behind us they laugh.
The army that we are to fight from what I can see is standing on the high grounds. They wield large shields and carry short spears, from horizon to horizon they stretch out.
How can these barbarians possibly hope to survive this. That will be our divine justice, our vengeance. They who raped the mothers and elder sisters when they finished with the men, they who destroyed our home, even if I am to die, I can only wish upon them death. One that is so painful, that even in the realm beyond shall they experience the cruel pain.
Horse weeing brings me back from my thought of vengeance. This man stand rides behind us, in front of these barbarians. His helmet is unique to the others. A single horn from the middle with three feathers sticking out from the top. Beyond that a half face mask covering his face. And his eyes they are deep red almost brown, and yet still I see in them the pools of blood and death they desire.
He carries with him just like all of them, a long spear, a leather shield and a short bow on his back. His armor consists of a mix of leather, mail and some plates. Nothing really that matches, but everything covers his body well enough to protect him from harm.
He rides tall, straight and even though he's the cause of all my misfortune, I cannot deny that he carries with him an aura of authority.
He shouts something to his horse riding men. They yell in accord together they battle cry and then their horns blow. These terrible horns, I shall never forget them. They sounded the moment they charged into the village the horns sounded a shrill sound of fear and victory.
Now once again they sound and it carries an intense tone of fear with it. The soldiers guarding us they push us forward, killing a few in the last row and we move. As a group we move forward, slowly at first but soon we pick up our pace.
No more than one quarter of the way have we crossed when a few the opposite side sounded their drums and trumpets. The men there build a wall of shields impenetrable to my eyes and their spears now were lowered, the pointy metal reflecting the early morning sun light into my eyes.
And us we are forced to keep running straight into that wall of spears. I could see it already, how we'd just be pushed into the wall of spears just because we are too frightened to do anything else.
Just as I am lost in thought on how I would die a painful death, someone besides me trips and drags me down with him. I land with my left shoulder hitting the ground first and then suddenly another person lands right on top of me. I look up, but all I see is a sky dark black.
Only a second later do I realize the black sky is nothing other than arrows hailing down on us. I however cannot find anyway to hide myself from that hail. Though I landed on my left shoulder, my left arm is squeezed under a corpse and my legs are squeezed under another corpse. I cannot move an inch at all.
So I watch, volley after volley they rain down while I taste my own blood and iron and smell the urine and dump that my dead comrade are releasing. My clothing are soaking themselves wet with their liquids and the blood that is mixed within. I on the other hand lie here my back to the ground waiting for my doom.
But I am still breathing, for the moment and I feel how the earth shakes. Gallop, gallop, gallop, the earth itself shakes as the barbarians finally start moving.
I see not their formation, but they move together as a single unit. I know it, it felt the same when I was in bed and then it started shacking.
Once again I'd be witness to their ruthless attack, this time I'd be right in their path, probably will be trampled upon and die from my bones being crushed.
And then they come, on large horse shadow galloping over my tiny body, another horse stepping and breaking the bones of an already dead person. And another horse crushing more bones.
A scream, someone else must have been in a similar situation as myself, it dies quickly though. I stop counting, since I cannot count more than ten, but more horses run passed me and hit some other bodies.
Then in the distance I hear shouting and fighting. Metal clashing upon metal, bones, wood and most of all humans. I hear their screams as they are in pain. I also hear how their lungs fill up with blood as they are stabbed in their chest.
I know not how long they fight, I only notice that by the time the sun has risen passed mid point the dreadful horn sounds once more. This time a sound of victory and death. I cannot believe my ears. The army that stretched horizon to horizon defeated by barbarians riding on horseback.
And I, I am alive. I only now realize I survived this … this …. hell.
Once more I try to free myself from the mountain of corpses I lie under. Crows crow as the sun sets. The land on a nearby dead body and start pick it, while I myself finally freed my arm. It takes a little longer and even my legs are free.
I feel how my arm and leg prickle as blood flows freely through them.
My stomach aches for food and looking at how the raven pick out the eye of a friend of mine I start wondering how it actually tastes. I use my hands to shoo away a raven that just picked out an eye, and put that eye into my mouth.
It tastes strange, slimy and has a lot of iron in it form the blood. I bite down on it and instantly a lot of liquid of many different taste fill my mouth. My stomach revolts and not only do I spew out the half eaten eye, but whatever is left from a meal I had long forgotten comes spewing out as well.
Acid in my tongue and strange chunky pieces leave its after taste.
Wolfs howl and bring me back to my sense. I must have passed out after I puked so badly. I don't know which direction I ran, but I find myself climbing up a hill. As I reach the top the clouds that covered the moon light open up for a brief moment and I find myself standing on top of not a natural hill top. It is a mountain of corpses, penetrated and pierced by volleys of arrows and spears.
A growl behind me reveals a lone wolf, who seemed rather interested in me. He is separate from the rest and it does not look like the rest of the wolf clan care about this lone wolf. He slowly closes in on me in this pose ready to strike. Me being on top of the mountain have little elsewhere to run, I look around and see a hilt sticking out of a corpse. I grab it and as I do the wolf lunges at me. I am able to point the blade and tip at the wolf before I fall once more back first onto the ground.
But nothing more happens. I feel the pain in the back and in the shoulder, since he bit me there, but nothing more. Then slowly a liquid is crawling itself down from my hands, which still hold the short sword, down onto my stomach and then my breathing chest. I look down towards my stomach and see no breath coming from the wolf, nor do I hear it breath.
I pull myself up and see that the short sword pierced the wolfs neck into its chest as it lunged for me. Yet, again I live, overwhelmed by that mere fact, my legs give in.
In my hand I am still holding onto this short sword. It has a round grip and not real hilt. What did father Pete call it. A gladius I think is what he called it when these soldiers came by some time ago.
It must be a lucky gladius, it saved my life. I am keeping it, is what I am thinking to myself. Looking over the field of death, scavenges, wolfs, crows crawl over it. Maybe I can sell a few of them myself. But really trying to peel off the armor from the dead is not as easy as it sounds. I give up on the first try, since I have no idea how to undo them and I am still starving from not having eaten anything.
Gladius in hand I run away from the field. Towards the forest and then towards the main road.
I know not how long I ran, since I blank out from time to time, but I think I counted at least 3 sun rises. I hear the sound of a bell. It echoes loudly along the main road and I find myself in front of a cloister. I hid my gladius under a nearby stone off to the east and south corner of their wall before I try to enter the cloister from their main entrance.
As I approach the main entrance people visiting the church or better said leaving from a sermon look at me strangely. As if they had seen the walking dead. They glance at me out of curiosity but quickly turn their head away.
A shadow from behind me catches my attention away from these bystander. Before me stands a tall woman in nun clothing. Looking at me with pity she embraces and hugs me. It is the first time in what seems to be ages that I do not feel the shivering cold and wet air that has surrounded me.
It feels warm, no it is actually hot, my head is burning and this sensation knocks me out.
I find myself in clean clothing and a clean bed, the tall blond nun sitting next to me.
"Dear child, thank the Lord you are alive," she says. "What is your name, so I may send a prayer to the Lord for saving your life."
I open my mouth but not a sound comes out. I try again but really nothing but 'ugh, ah, hmm' come out of my mouth. I try tell her my name but my voice is not that of my own.
"Why don't we call you Ophelia," she says as she sees me struggle for words.
How did she know my name? No matter I just nod happily. "Have some bread and soup Ophelia, I am sure you are hungry." Besides her are indeed some food. The soup, nothing more than some potatoes and herbs, smelled and tasted delicious compared to the iron blood, urine or shit that I hand smelled and tastes in hell. The dark bread with nuts and what not is a thousand times better than that eye ball I tried eating.
I am saved.