Red Herald

The Demon of Death loomed perilously above a shit-reeking Red Herald camp. Death himself was seducing the Red Herald archers to the bowels of Hell, promoting the band to Lords of Graves in their own shit-pits and feebly dug trenches. The prevailing darkness as witness, Death was the executioner.

As the intangible Demon of Death’s proverbial ax descended, archer Thomas Scarlet avoided Death’s killing blow and the cold embrace which followed. Thomas crouched belly-first in a trench wide as a man, high as a dwarf. The watery shit the ditch harbored flecked his crimson tunic which covered his dirty mail coat. The aroma of feces, attacking Thomas’ nostrils, outweighed the putrid stench of urine. Thomas gasped for a fresh breath of air. His lungs found the fetid odor of waste and mud.

Crossbow bolts continued to cut through the blackness. High, smooth, abrupt. Bolts winged close enough above Thomas’ sweat-matted head he could feel the dispatched air. The bolts hissing death song was the same chirrup with various results; one lantern wielding archer suffered a bolt through the eye socket, his helm falling as his head backlashed and bobbed lifelessly until the archer clashed with the semi-frozen soil, dead weight; another’s red tunic perforated by the peppering of bolts; victims nailed to thin alders.

The Duvarian barrage of winged-death faltered but had yet to entirely cease. Thomas Scarlet, gripping his long bow, his brother of war, perched his head above the trench, inadvertently inviting Death’s ax once more. That welcome was unmolested. Briefly.

Thomas Scarlet made out distant lantern light which splashed across a darkened sea of corpses on a blood-soaked land once sprawling with greenery. Thomas wasted no time positioning his bow at a desperate angle, drawing its hemp cord, hand parallel with his right ear. His sleep deprived eyes looked down the arrow’s bodkin, drawing a line as visible as the Demon of Death. That particular line led meticulously to an approaching Duvarian horsemen who hefted a lantern. His arrow followed the line his eyes had drawn. Until it missed the rider by a hair’s breadth. If his arrow struck a crossbowmen or men-at-arms, Thomas Scarlet failed to see it.

The rider lodged his sword into the skull of a running Red Herald archer. The blade cut into the teeth of the archer, burying itself in the man’s skull as if destiny decreed it her proper sheath. Thomas Scarlet needed only the moon’s silvery light to see the eruption of crimson. The rider decided releasing the sword from his gloved hand was wiser than potentially breaking his arm or unhorsing himself. He curbed his horse, realizing he was susceptible to Red Herald arrow fire, noticing he had charged too many paces from Duvarian cavalry. He was greeted with Red Herald bodkins sinking passed his coat of mail, into flesh and muscle. The inertia of the arrow in conjunction with the mare’s swift trot unsaddled the rider.

The sickle of the moon shot weak rays of twilight. It was enough for Thomas Scarlet to crawl several paces through the trench, hands-and-knees, like some kitchen maid. He passed a body and checked the pulse; waited for the chest to rise. The body registered as a corpse. He continued down the trench as if haplessly crawling down an endless tunnel which betrayed light at its end. The light was the curtain of trees, housing Red Herald’s.

There was a gurgle. “Please,” a man groaned paces ahead. Thomas Scarlet could make out the silhouette. “Please,” he spat, voice weak as if gravel filled the man’s throat. Perhaps worse occupied his throat.

“Yes,” Thomas Scarlet said quietly.

“Please,” it pleaded.

“Yes,” Thomas said again, nearing the man. Thomas grimaced as the man released his bowels. The man gripped his stomach. The archer’s strength faded quickly. His guts slipped out like wet eels. The weak lancing twilight allowed Thomas to make out his face; a lifeless counterpart to his friend William Selmoor. William Selmoor’s eyes were still open, his face deadpan, lacking his earlier vitality.

“Damned bastards,” tears streamed from Thomas, “I’ll kill every Duvarian bastard,” he said with a kind of vigor. Thomas found William’s arrow bag and tied it around himself which rested above his own. William’s arrow bag contained six arrows, whilst Thomas’ own bag contained four. That’s ten dead Duvarian bastards.

Thomas clenched his yew stave, exerting an animalistic anger that submerged at the loss of a friend. His bow filled the coffers of Red Herald’s and filled Duvarian coffins.

Thomas kissed his dead friend’s cheeks, said a prayer, and apologized he couldn’t burn the body. In desperation he crawled through the darkened bowels of Hell where darkness, corpses and feces were prevalent.

Both Duvarian bolts and Red Herald arrows cleaved the world. The latter proved greater in numbers, speed and power. Red Herald arrows cut through mail the Duvarian’s were to die in.

As their lantern-light grew ever smaller, dimmer, Thomas Scarlet knew the Duvarian’s were retreating.

So no Duvarian bastard was to slice the fingers from Red Heralds so they never could draw their bows. No Duvarian bastards were to fart on Red Herald occupied land. Until morning.