Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
- C. S. Lewis -
The sword glinted in the sunlight, a beacon of light before what I knew would be a bloody day. I couldn't hear what was being said but I didn't have to; words speaking of the righteousness of our cause, the glory we would find on the battlefield and the enjoyment of the everlasting peace this battle would cause to be.
Peace, at least until the next battle.
As the noble waved his sword around his head, occasionally pointing it across the field at the thousands of enemy soldiers arrayed in neat battle lines, to punctuate his point I couldn't shake the thought that I fought simply for him to gain more lands, more power and prestige. I'd kill and maim for him, maybe die myself and...he got more lands and titles. original im src
War was familiar to me. I'd been groomed and trained for it from a young age, was knighted at only twenty one years old and now, five years later, it seemed bringing death and destruction was all I knew. I was good at it - The fact I was alive after so many campaigns and battles attested to that fact.
Absently patting my destrier to calm him I tried to scratch an itch on my left side, a fruitless endeavour considering the plate steel I wore; my squirming simply made it worse. I resigned myself to the discomfort and looked down the line to where my liege lord was accepting a lance from his squire.
So it would begin.
I always liked this moment. I found it peaceful. The snapping of the pennons and standards which caught the wind, the clink of steel armour, beating of hooves as the war horses stamped eager for battle, creaking of leather tack and my own breathing as I slowed my heart beat in preparation; focused and prepared to kill. It was a brief moment though, we'd be galloping across the field soon enough and instead of gently sloping fields of swaying grass I'd only see red.
The signal was given and almost as one the line of heavy horse, armoured cavalry, spurred forward and in an instant the world changed.
We cantered, a line of steel. I held my lance skyward to half distance and then, after pulling my visor down, kicked my war horse into a gallop, lowered and couched the lance and sought a target.
Heavy horse were deployed as a unit, a wall of steel that rode as close together as possible, designed to impact and penetrate many ranks of the opposing force, usually foot soldiers. I'd never faced a charge myself and never wished to; it was brutal and incredibly frightening. Half the time the opposing forces broke and ran, the other half of the time they were mostly slaughtered. This time was the latter.
Arrows began to fall like rain and several glanced off my armour. Some weren't as fortunate and shafts found joins and chinks between plate steel finding also the soft flesh beneath. I heard screams of pain from man and horse alike but I ignored it and we thundered forward.
It was always at this point a hundred yards from impact everything went silent for me. I felt like I was in a tunnel, that the world closed in around me and all I could see was the tip of my lance and the person I'd sink it into, on this occasion a portly bald man with eyes as big as saucers. His shield would do him no good today. Eighty, sixty, forty feet, thirty...I gripped the lance a little tighter, rose slightly in the stirrups and leaned forward...
...I never heard the sound of steel-encased horses and men impacting steel encased troops but I knew it was a horrifying sound. For me all was silent, every time. Other knights said they heard it all.
Moments after the tremendous crash of steel on steel came the sounds of braking bones and the wet tearing sound of rending flesh. Battle cries turned into screams of pain and suffering from man and beast as sharpened steel entered bodies, cut and slashed. The massive destriers careened into men and blood fountained everywhere, the smell of rust, and then my lance struck.
I watched it punch through the shield the bald man held in frightened hands; it deflected upwards and entered his head which popped like a dropped melon spraying his life's-blood upwards in a gushing fountain. My lance snapped at its mid-point simultaneously but I held on to it as my momentum carried me onwards into a mass of steel-armoured flesh. My horse rode down the corpse of my first kill and the shattered lance took the next in the chest, his weight tearing the lance from my grip. As my momentum slowed I reached to my left where my sword hung and pulled its deadly length and began to strike left and right in the melee of humanity in which I found myself.
Our tactic was to disrupt and dismay the enemy, regroup, return to our own lines form up and charge again. The infantry would then advance under cover from the archers and the knights would ride back into the resulting melee to do some bloody work.
As I laid about me with the sword I felt strikes against myself; they hurt a little but I sustained no injury. To one side I'd strike a mans head in two, the other slash off an arm or down into the crook of a mans neck as the foot soldiers tried to pull me from my horse who stamped, kicked and bit at the enemy as a well-trained destrier should. It was chaos and carnage, battle always is, and the field soon became slick and bloody with bodies, body parts and blood...and then the signal. I cut into the face of a man who fell trying desperately to hold his cloven face together, wheeled and rode back to our lines hacking left and right as I went.
We regrouped and charged a second time with the same result then our own archers poured on the fire and the infantry charged. We won the day.
I don't know what my liege lord gained that day, what lands or titles, gold or silver, animal-stock, personal prestige or power he may have earned; I know he gained it through the efforts of others though, and a great many people had to die for that gain.
Looking back, I wonder if those that died that day, and on all the others, were the lucky ones. Their fight was over. But the physically wounded have to live a life of pain and suffering to their dying day - often struggling to scratch out a living or living hard in the streets or in the open - the fight continues for them.
For me...I escaped injury that day and now, years later, have recovered from physical injuries sustained in other battles.
But...I see their faces; awake or asleep, I see their faces. They look at me, not in fear or with the expression they wore when I killed them, they look at me with peaceful expressions. But they're accusing and I feel deep guilt, sorrow and shame. I tried to talk to a friend about it, about the dreams, the loathing, but he wouldn't hear it. In truth I think he felt the same but didn't want to admit it. Maybe it's best.
Duty, honour and courage are words they speak when grooming a man to fight and before a battle; I believe in them, I'm just not certain they mean the same thing to me anymore, ever really did. However, I have a duty to myself and others close to me to act with honour and find the courage to continue. So my fight continues.
[A fiction]
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised so be humble and kind
