Location:
Somewhere in America
Time: Unknown
Dark gray storm clouds moved across the sky to cover the blood
red moon. It had been a dry time. The rains would no doubt be making up for
lost time tonight. However, it was not a good night to rain. There had been
little moister in the air for some time and that only made the frigid winter
air even more unbearable.
A lone wolf howled in the darkness. It was joined by a few
others until there was a loud echo of the strange chorus, rebounding from the
mountains to be finally stifled by the trees of the forest below. The wolve's
songs echoed for a long while until suddenly they stopped. They had either
stopped or been drowned out by the howls of the angry wind. It whipped through
the trees and cut into the skin like a wave of needles. An army stood in wait
in the forest.
They had stopped just before a great clearing. They were
silent and alert. Their eyes were fixed upon the clearing ahead as statues would
be in a garden or street. They were huddled together to form a large wall
stretching along the edge of the clearing. They breathed into their coats to
prevent their collective breath to be seen by their enemy. There was a small
clinking noise piercing the night as a horse appeared through the trees. The
horse appeared as if it were Satan's prize Stallion. Its fur was jet black. It
was a swift looking, stallion about the size of a large carthorse. It's eyes
were cruel and unnatural looking for a horse. It was as if the creature were a
demon bend and twisted and forged into the shape of a great warhorse. However,
the horse was only a mere shadow of the man sitting stride him. The soldiers
could not make out his face in the utter darkness, but they saw his fiery blue
eyes piercing the blackness. They could slightly make out his long slightly
groomed hair. His face was hidden in the shadows of his features, but his eyes
shown through. The night seemed to freeze around them. It was as if he had
brought the wind with him. The horse grunted and pawed the ground impatiently.
"Any sign of them yet?" he said in a soft, deep,
serious voice.
"N-n-no, G-g-general." A man close to him
stuttered as his teeth chattered from the cold.
"General. We've been here all night! They will not
come! If we do not rest now, they will attack us as we sleep." A man spoke
out against the General. The General slowly turned to examine the man. His cold
blue eyes roaming over the man's small, boyish body. He smiled at the boy. The
boy all but screamed at this. The General's teeth were quite straight and
white, and the canines filed to points. He appeared as the worst nightmare of a
small child whose older sibling has told them of a vampire. He was no creature
like that. He would have made a vampire or lycanthrope or ghoul or ghost or
wild beast run screaming into the night that it came from.
"My dear boy," he said in a soft, mellow tone.
"They are there. I know they are. They are waiting for us to abandon our
guard, and then they will attack."
"How do you know?"
"When you are commanding and army of men, and when
the lives of all those men are your soul responsibility, you will understand,
but for now, you are not. You are a mere child with no experience of the world
around you. You have not yet spilled a drop of enemy blood yet. Now, who do you
think you are to challenge my orders?" His tone was calm. It was the voice
of a father explaining to his child the proper way to hold a sword.
"I merely say that it is cold and it will rain soon.
We must make camp and produce some sort of shelter. We have not stopped to eat
for days and we have little water left. I do not see them, sir. Will you please
understand where I am coming from?" He begged. The General looked him over
curiously. The boy was shivering. Half from the cold, half from utter terror of
the man mounted upon the great beast of a horse. The smiled slowly faded from
the General's face as he stroked the mane of his steed. The horse grunted and
let out a short cry of inpatients.
"I assure you, my young lad, they lie in what just as
we do. They wait for either our attack or our rest, and either way it will
coast the lives of more."
"I do not see, them!" The boy screamed. A few more
men crowded around him and agreed with the boy.
"We're hungry," some cried. "And
tired." added others. "Please, let us rest." The General seemed
unmoved by this small upraise. He dismounted his horse and approached the boy.
They boy could now make out his smooth, cold, youthful handsome face. The General
smiled once more at the boy.
"Fine then. I will let you rest. Every man who has
requested it of me and none more." The men who had not spoken looked at
him in horror. The General looked at them and smiled. "You said nothing to
me of your torment. They did. Now they shall rest." The General punched
the boy in the stomach. As he pulled his hand away the boy looked down in
horror as the small knife slid from his flesh. The boy's eyes rolled back into
his head and he fell backward to the ground, blood spilling from his mouth and
the wound in his abdomen. He unsheathed his sword and sliced through the man
nearest him. The man's upper body slid from his lower. The General slaughtered
every man who had opposed him. Some of the other soldiers ran to bury the
bodies. The General stood between them and the bodies.
"Don't." He shook his head. "Let them lie
here as an example of my wrath. I will not be disrespected like this. Do not
let the swine be buried like men. They deserved their fate!" the General
sheathed his sword. "In Pace Requiescat!" he smiled and turned back
to the clearing
