Camping isn't exactly one of John's favorite past times but when the invitation comes and it's on someone else's dime he accepts and spends a day trying to find his hiking boots. He tears apart his whole flat in the process but he does find them, shoved to the back on a shelf in his closet.
They're almost brand new and he goes for a smoke to celebrate his find, packing that evening and heading out to meet his friends.
He's got a lot of friends and there's always someone interesting about when he's around. He just seems to attract interesting people. Sometimes to his own detriment.
He goes out with a few friends who have latched onto a retired history professor from down south.
It's his first time meeting Gerry but the man seems friendly enough and he shakes his hand and Gerry asks him for a light as they set off, all packed into a brown Ford Grenada wagon. There's five of them and plenty of room and once they're out of London someone sparks a joint, reminding John of years and journies past.
He's not as into the drugs as he was when he was young but he takes a little toke and laughs with the others.
It's a good crew and sometimes it's just nice to be included. He rolls the window down and sticks his arm out while the others talk politics and movies and people they know, sports and horses, jokes and local spots.
Gerry, who seems to be holding the whole venture together has a loud, booming laugh and a wild beard that looks like it took some real work to achieve and John likes him. Gerry tells them about passing historic sites and happenings and he listens easily as the wheels turn.
They pass other cars and massive lorries, farms and houses and it's nice weather.
They drive for nearly an hour and pull off alongside a field.
Then it's everyone out and over a low stone wall and through a small woods until they find a spot on the edge of a private field.
"You sure this spot is alright?" Someone asks as John and another two start trying to figure out the tent.
Gerry laughs. "Course it is." He said. "Right to roam, you know? It's been upheld."
The legitimacy of their venture doesn't hinder them too much and they get the tent set up and a fire going before too long and soon enough they're all sitting around comfortably by said fire, eating and smoking and laughing.
Gerry knows the history of just about every field in England it seems and every wall and valley too and he tells them fantastic stories of battles and then less exciting ones about the political ramifications of those battles.
They all listen and John enjoys the stories, it's good to know the history of the place you're standing on and he imagines men in old armor, spears and swords and horses screaming.
All things lost so long ago.
The smoke from their cigarettes and joints mingles into the air with the smoke from the camp fire and John takes his turn fetching wood with two of the others, enjoying himself as he tramps through the woods in search of a good stick.
The sky eventually turns dark over head and they all settle back, listening to Gerry explain the past and staring up at stars that have hung there for centuries.
John wonders if any of the men in Gerry's stories looked up at them and then after a while talk turns to little things and after that people start to drift off.
John wakes fairly late in the night and after too many beers and too much fun he disentangles himself from the tent and slips out to take a piss.
It's dark now and curiously he creeps out of the woods and into the clearing to get a better look at the sky.
It's a fairly clear night out, only a few dark whisps hang black against the sky.
He lights a cigarette and enjoys his private moment before a cracking sound fills he air and he jumps, hitting the black earth as a bullet wizzes past his left ear.
His cigarette slips for m his fingers, glows orange in the night and then disappears to earth.
John lays with his heart hammering painfully I'm his chest.
Gun fire?
He looked around and then hears feet pounding and the screaming if horses.
A hunter he could process but when he raises his eyes to see he can make out hundred of pairs of legs, all trampling the black earth hard around him.
It's a thunderous sound that reaches his ears. Hooves and men standing around him and he rolls then, trying to get away from the stampeding feet.
People are screaming now and when he's finally managed to get back to the edge of the woods he can only stare in dumbfounded shock.
The field is full of fighting men, old armor clanking and swords clashing as they battle but hidden amongst the silver and spears are the even stranger men and women. . . Men and women with painted faces and bare chests. . .
John's eyes don't totally take in the awful sight as the figures spill black blood across the earth.
A young man falls near him, leather armor a poor match for steel.
The boy's green eyes blink up at him in pained confusion and his mouth opens and closes uselessly but he's staring right at him and he's the only one that's seemed to notice him.
John states back, uncertain of what to say to him or if speaking would make a difference.
The boy reaches for him then, young, maybe only twenty. . . He's got blood on his lips and confusion in his eyes.
He doesn't want to touch him, doesn't want to see the blood or the green eyes but for all times he's been called a bastard John does have a heart and so he reaches out and takes the boy's hand.
Something desperate seems to roll from the boy's face and he gasps. "A-am I dying?" The boy asks as a wooden shield splinters and it's barer falls, black blood hitting black earth and seeping in dark rivers down below.
John nods. "Sorry mate."
The boy's eyes, impossibly fast. . . they search the ageless stars for some understanding and he nods, those same eyes rolling in his long dead head. "I feel cold." He whispers.
John hangs his own head. "I know, lad." He whispers, feeling the boy's forgotten fingers tighten around his hand.
"D-don't want to die." The boy says but John knows the truth. Most people talk about death like they have a choice but when they don't have that choice they don't want to die. Not most people. This kid didn't have a choice. He's already dead.
A warring figure so old John can't place his clothes falls then, speared on the blade of a man a millennia younger. It's gruesome and probably has already happened. Probably never happened. Couldn't have happened.
Happened?
This is only a reflection after all.
A million battles fought here, across this torn and bloodied land. The blood soaking the soil as kings and pages fell alike. Over and over and over, all of them fighting but without rules or sense.
"Do you have a name, lad?" John asks the dying boy, trying to be kind to him, trying to show him some bit of useless compassion.
The boy's mouth works curiously but he only stares upwards. "Can't remember." He says, green eyes vivid in the dark. Afraid in the dark.
Girls might have liked him once if this hadn't happened.
"It's alright." He hears himself say.
It isn't, not really. Not for this one or for any of these men.
"Will they burry me?" The boy asks, voice high and choked now.
John doesn't know so he lies and nods.
Bones split and shatter, men and horses scream; steel strikes painfully against flesh, cutting and tearing men like they're nothing.
The boy coughs blood and John wants to let him go but doesn't. It won't be long now and the boy will be dead. No use for cruelty now.
Not when he's been dead for a few hundred years already.
Gerry's words about the civil war and Cromwell flit between his ears, dancing in this boy's green eyes and reflecting off of the armor that's now stained with blood.
He looks out as the boy dies again, perhaps as he does every night or just on anniversaries and sees black, wet earth and weapon bitten bodies.
They don't look like living men when they're laid out like this and yet they were. A thousand dead men, all left to rot. Killing and dying in vain for eternity.
Bullets and stone weapons side by side, all of their barres bloody and lost.
These scars that don't heal, trenches and pits, nameless graves for the ones here. All of them forgotten in time and history except by men like Gerry and now him too who's seen it, seen the battles that don't end.
He watches a man's head- split by a club and almost chokes on the sight. This is hell, this is terror. This is insanity.
The boy is dead again, as he has been all along and then a second later he's back and on his feet again, crying out to his master and running back towards him to serve and die again.
John watches helplessly and sees a bullet pass through him. The poor fool falls, eyes hurt and confused and asking careless skies.
A horse screams and John stumbles as far back as he can get, green eyes hanging in his mind as he watches the scene unfold.
Destruction and chaos on every hand, in every heart and in every mind, their wounds spilling black death onto modern soil, recent earth. Turned earth. Earth that covers them. Them that were left here. Them without graves or names.
Them with green eyes and confused faces. All of them lost here.
A thousand broken spears and lives, heads split and bones broken. . . All aberrations of life. All wrong and twisted. All forgotten.
The boy is back again, helpless to his death as any of them and he's bleeding and angry and confused.
John pities him just a little and looks as an ancient king stares round, nose wrinkled and expression lost. He wonders what order this man gave. Which of these dead are his burden and if he even knows what he's done.
The king is felled, just like his men and bows to the earth already marked with blood. His eyes wide and his head wreathed in hammered metal for all the good it did him.
For all the good it does him for he rises right back up again and stabs a man with a painted face through the middle, ripping flesh and screams from men he's never met and never hated.
John remembers he came here to piss and turns from the sight and the dying men, turns from things he can't control and nearly trips over a down limb.
He curses and shakes his head, horrid sounds and images locked in himself now behind scared, green eyes.
He takes his piss, safe from the sounds of death and far behind the tree line. He leans against a tree to light up after, the only one awake and alive that night. His hands are still shaking.
It's good to know the history of the place you're standing on and he looks back through the dark trees to an empty field spilled black with centuries of forgotten blood.
It's silent now but in his mind he can still hear them fighting. . . still hear the ringing of their swords, the crack of their rifles and the pain in their voices. All of it clashing over and over and over again on a dark field behind a low stone wall.
He finishes his cigarette and tramps back to the tent and fire, walking away from Saxon kings and ancient men with painted faces, men with muskets and knights that never made it home. . . Their green eyed page boys all lost in the mud.
Camping isn't one of John's favorite past times but he does have to admit that there's something to it, something in getting away from the city and Gerry sure knows how to pick a spot. The man knows every battlefield and stone wall across England.
Now John knows one too.