Enemy´s Eyes

Daul was five rows back and the arrows had already come. They had rained down from the sky in deathly silence and would have caught them off guard if some veteran in the front row hadn’t raised up his shield and set off a chain reaction that slowly progressed all the way through the ranks. It was better than it could have been, but some of them had still been late with their defenses, or put them up at an ineffective angle. They continued screaming even now, but Daul could hardly hear it anymore.

Daul was past the moment of fear. The nausea was gone, the tightness in his bowels. There was no way out, nowhere to run and hide. The forces had engaged. The arrows were proof of that. So now he was committed, and that lent him a peculiar type of calm. He was just waiting for it. Waiting to run forward to die or to live. That appeared to be his destiny. Now that he had marched up to the precipice, he found he could handle it.

He was not a large soldier, not the kind that reveled in battle. There were those around him that were. Men the size of mountains who considered the fray in a completely different perspective. It would take something special to bring them down, and they took the field with a reasonable expectation to be able to walk back off it when all was accounted for at the end.

Daul, on the other hand, was of average size. He was well trained and athletic, but this was his first battle, and he knew that there were those in the opposing army who had advantages of both size and experience. One strike was bad enough, two was unnerving. But as he had already concluded, there was no way out of it now, nowhere but forward to run.

Five rows back, he thought. Maybe, just maybe, the battle wouldn’t come to him. Maybe he could stay hidden behind his comrades.

He looked to his left and saw a mammoth man with bulging muscle and a huge red beard smiling in anticipation. Something about that crazed look told him that he would be seeing action, that he wasn’t far enough back for security.

As one they started to move. Daul hadn’t heard any word of command, but the press of the bodies sent him forward. Shoulder to shoulder they crept along and Daul found that he could not allow himself to drift further back in the ranks as he had been secretly planning to. They were all too close, and they all pushed each other along as if they all shared the idea of the subtle retreat.

The walk became a jog, the jog a run, the run a sprint, and the exhilaration of the moment stirred his adrenaline. This was the battle. This was the moment of truth. And he felt the pounding of his heart in his ears and in the shortness of his breath. He resolved instantly that if this was to be his last accounting, it would be a good one, and he let loose with a wild scream that was picked up an repeated by the hoarse and nervous throats of the men beside him. His whoop became louder with their augmentation, and he picked up his own volume to pay greater homage to the cacophony they were creating.

Everything slowed in a sense. His eyes recorded the images that flashed before him. The color of the men. So stark and white against the green fields and blue skies.