A dead man's story(intro)

The grey smoky sky hung over the city with a grave spirit. Matching its dismay, the cold wind blew an eerie song of the dead, howling gently over the forlorn battleground with waves of rising emotion in each gust.
Inside, countless souls had contended for its prize, eager to throw their lives away for the price of victory...The pyres of burning dead could be seen for miles.
The muddy, battered landscape leading up to the edge of the city was war-torn and barren of life. Only the stubs of blackened tree stumps and rotting trunks marked the evidence of previous life along that bleak stretch of ground, forever removed by relentless shelling and bombardment from the city’s defenders.
Near the edge of a crater the torched form of a dead tree stood tall and unmoving, like a monument in a cemetery. A crow was nestled amongst the hollow of the open trunk, its eyes moving across the landscape with hungry intent.
Corpses littered the field, casualties of an unforgiving tool of war. During their charge artillery had pounded the ranks of men into non-existence, only falling silent when the city’s forward observers had seen the last man standing be blown to pieces and scattered into atoms from the merciless ordinance.
Though for all the flesh morsels covering the ground, the crow’s gaze never wavered from the slow moving shape of a man dragging himself along the broken ground.
He was slow. And careful. He was unnoticeable to the apathetic eye observing a distant piece of ground, home only to the dead. But as slow and deliberate as he was, he could never escape the sight of the crow...
With a flutter of its dark wings, the crow took flight for the dying man, its eyes never wavering.
Landing on the lip of another crater, the bird watched the man slip inside, inch by inch, moment by moment. When the man was finally out of the line of sight of snipers and observation posts, he was able to move at speed again, rolling into a ball at the base of the crater and ripping his torn fatigues open with haste. With a groan he inspected a wound at the base of his stomach and applied a makeshift bandage to it. He sighed as he half-heartedly applied medical tape to the cloth holding his insides back. He and the crow both knew he wasn’t going to make it.
The crow tilted its black head toward the city as the faraway thump of artillery echoed. Distant explosions shook the ground, sending bits of loose soil skittering to the bottom of the crater. The man dangerously exposed himself by frantically crawling up the lip of the crater and sticking his head up to view the carnage just several hundred meters away.
Another charge. Hundreds of men, this time supported with armored vehicles and personnel carriers, ran headlong into a barrage of devastating shellfire that killed them by the dozens every second they exposed themselves above ground.
The man cried out.
“No, you stupid bastards! Turn around!” he yelled hoarsely, the top of his head sticking out of the hole.
The plea went unanswered.
Within one minute, the valiant charge into No-Man’s Land was ended. Though the shelling did not stop for long moments, the last man fell quickly and the lifeless earth was once again returned to the dead. The smoke slowly cleared away to reveal the dark shapes of smoldering vehicles and the lumpen forms of the broken and battered bodies.
“No...” the man groaned, and slid back into crater, losing himself in sorrow.
After a long moment of silence, he wiped his face clear of dirt and mud, staring into the palms of his hands afterwards, as if they weren’t really his.
The crow cawed.
The man lifted his gaze from his palms and looked at the bird. A slow smile drew across his face and he leaned back into the crater, lying on his back with one hand across wounded stomach.
For a long time he simply stared at the crow, and the crow stared back at him.
The man’s face was old, though that did not mean he wasn’t young. War had aged him far beyond his time. His face was craggy and worn, the scars crossed his face like a paintbrush would a canvass, each telling an individual story and experience that molded him into what he was.
His eyes were distant and sad, just like the sky above him.
He had lost something dear to him a long time ago...

Innocense.

Into the depths of the man’s eyes the crow looked, and began unraveling a story held deep within him. A story that no man should hear, let alone live...