Brothers In Arms (2024)

    Where there’s life there’s hope. It may be the end of my own life, but I can still see my comrades fighting around me. I can still see their hope surging them forward into the fray to meet our enemy. Swords drawn and shields block. In this battlefield of chaos is its own odd tranquility. Both sides are fighting for their own beliefs. Fighting for something. Maybe fighting for someone. Truly brothers in arms. The only difference is where you come from it seems. 

    I lay here, bloodied and bruised, with an arrow in my chest. The pain is excruciating. Making it so very hard to breathe. I try to start to move to the back of the battlefield, in hopes of reaching someone who could help me. With my free hand I grab the ground and push myself forward. I keep moving, dragging myself as fast as I can. It feels as though I am going up a waterfall, fruitless and hindered by many obstacles. No matter where I moved there seemed to be a foot there to crush my hand. In every direction I looked,  legs of both enemy and ally ram into my face. 

    Other comrades that lay on the ground with me, also moved my sluggish pace. At least those that aren’t dead, that is. Hindered by their own wounds and brothers in arms. A few try to cry out for help. Some unwounded soldiers try to stop and help us, but are met with a violent blade. Our enemy is truly unrelenting. Surprisingly though, they do not take the time to kill the ones on the ground, or at least finish us off. Maybe because they don’t have the time to or are filled with a blood lust that they have to rush towards their next victim. 

    The enemy’s side are not the only ones filled with a raging vengeances. I see my true brother, Joseph, charging forth on horseback. The black steed he rides surges him forth into enemy fire. All who cross their path soon come crashing to the ground.  Many of our opponents flee from his sight while he glaives all that are near. Ripping them into shreds and lay crumpled in the horse’s dust. Their blood splashed along the earth as if they were decorating the ground like crimson ribbons on a woman’s dress. 

    If anyone could win this war on their own it would be him. Skilled in all that he was taught in combat. Could jump on any horse and ride them effortlessly, as if he was the one running on the ground. Has the charisma of any bard. He could command a typhoon to change directions and rage hell over his enemies. It was almost as if the gods blessed him to us to win this war. But of course, just like anyone of us, he too is flesh and bone. 

    I see the axe of an enemy slash the horse’s front legs. Making the once feared creature become nothing. Like vultures to a fresh carcass, the enemy descends on my brother and soon leaves him like their brothers before. Maybe life is not meant for our kind after all…