Bifocal (2024)
The air smelled of blood, but none had yet been shed.
BY ALEXANDER VISHEGORODSKIY
IMAGE BY CAMEO VENCHIARUTTI
The air smelled of blood, but none had yet been shed. The sky was tinged crimson from the rising sun on the horizon, casting a garish light on the battlefield as if the entire landscape had been stained with red. Everywhere I looked reminded me of blood. It was maddening.
“It won’t be so bad,” Falkir said. “Just find someone big and stay behind them. If they catch on or get hit, move to the next person. Just don’t lose your footing.”
“Why would I lose my footing?” I asked.
Falkir looked at me with an amused expression. “This is a battlefield. All those boots and hooves kicking up the earth, mixed with the blood and sweat—we may as well be fighting on ice.”
I swallowed nervously. Falkir and I stood in a long row of soldiers at the front of the army, awaiting our proverbial bell toll. There were thousands of men standing behind me. What have I and my unfortunate compatriots done to deserve a place at the front? The thought dogged me. This turn of fate may very well be my last.
Our commanding officer rode laps on his destrier around the army and shouted orders to his subordinate officers, who would relay the orders to different army sections. Across the battlefield, stakes were driven into the ground, accompanied by standards bearing the coat of arms of each army that would fight and die here. In the distance, smoke plumed into the sky—campfires from the enemy’s war camp. Our opponents, visible in the distance, matched our size. I wondered if someone was on their side looking over at us and thinking my thoughts. The fog of war obscured them and lent them a menacing disposition that didn’t help my morale.
It was dawn now, and by nightfall the hills surrounding us would be overshadowed by mountains of bodies. The survivors would walk the battlefield, strip the fallen of valuables, and toss the bodies onto roaring bonfires to avoid a plague. Was I fated to become one of those corpses? Will there be nothing to my name but ashes?
The soldier on my other side seemed to be panicking even more than I was. He looked younger than me, perhaps as many as three years my junior, and I was barely a man grown. He turned to look at me, but he didn’t seem to really see me. His forehead was slick with sweat, and his chest rose and fell rapidly. I decided then he would be one of the first to die.
“Mother warned me, cursed me a fool for signing up. Didn’t listen, did I? Got my comeuppance now,” he said, more to himself than me.
“Get a hold of yourself,” I said, but I didn’t come across as confidently as I intended.
“Should’ve listened to your mother, boy. Bad time to find out being a soldier isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Falkir said from my opposite side. I gave him a scolding look, but he only shrugged. The panicking soldier gave me a look ripe with terror.
“Cavalry, form ranks!” an officer shouted. The cavalry, hundreds strong, rode ahead and took formation, the warhorses’ barding clinking and rattling. They would initiate the forward march by charging ahead, followed by the foot soldiers soon after. I didn’t envy them despite their mounts.
“Crossbowmen, archers, stand ready!” the same officer had shouted. The sound of drawstrings being pulled taut and crossbows being cranked briefly filled the air. I looked behind me, past the endless columns of soldiers. Men wielding bows and crossbows manned siege towers, prepared to rain hellfire from above on the enemy. Now them, I envied. They would join the fight eventually, but only after the frontline broke down enough that continuing to loose arrows and bolts would kill our own men just as many as theirs. Beyond the siege towers, the smoke from our war camp was visible. The general and the lords would be there now, waiting to hear the battle's results. I turned to face forward, determined not to look back again.
“Cavalry—prepare for charge!” an officer shouted. It would soon begin.
“Don’t run too fast when the march begins. If you do, the bolts will catch you long before a blade does,” Falkir said. They called it a march, but it was always more of a frenzied sprint. I noted the life-saving advice and waited for the order.
“Cavalry—charge!” the officer shouted.
All at once, armed with lances, the horsemen spurred their horses into a gallop, and all I could hear was the staccato sound of all the steeds moving as one, as though an immense thundercloud had descended over the field. The sound was reciprocated from the other side of the battlefield; the enemy had responded in kind. As the line of horsemen grew smaller, the enemy’s cavalry charge grew larger. They met in the middle with a sickening sound of whinnying horses, wet crunching, and screams of horror. Men were thrown off their horses, sometimes pierced by lances, sometimes bucked off. Those who couldn’t stay in their saddles had to avoid getting crushed by their own steeds. What began as a tightly organized charge quickly became a chaotic, churning mass of man and horse. Some of the soldiers near me heaved into the dirt. It would be our turn soon.
“Men-at-arms!” an officer shouted. “Forward march!”
The bell tolls.
All the soldiers shouted as one and sprinted towards the battle, and I followed suit. With the entire army on the move, we made for a deadly stampede. The sound of our combined footfalls emulated an earthquake, and the enemy responded in kind. The dust we had kicked up in addition to the cavalry charge had now settled over the battlefield, giving our surroundings a gloomy visage. I followed Falkir’s advice and lagged behind with him. Behind me, I heard crossbows going off. Bolts whizzed softly above us, which could only mean the enemy had already done the same.
The boy who had been panicking earlier ran directly in front of me. He was giving it his all as though it were a race to see who could make it to the battlefield first. I heard something piercing metal, and he jerked suddenly. He was thrown backwards to the ground, a large crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest. His plate would keep the bolt from piercing too deep, but it wouldn’t save his life—it would just grant him a slower death. I saw it all so quickly it was scarcely a blur. Still, I acted fast, carefully shifting to the left to position myself behind another soldier as I ran. Falkir had done the same to two soldiers already. Men around us began to drop one after the other to the barrage of bolts. I felt guilty about using my comrades as unwitting human shields, but we were helpless against the bolts. Our shields wouldn’t withstand the impact force any more than our armour would have.
The distant sound of fighting grew gradually louder, and the soil underfoot had become mud. I realized the importance of Falkir's emphasis on not falling—with all the men running behind me, I would quickly be trampled.
“Shield wall!” someone around me had shouted. All the soldiers raised their shields above their heads as they ran. I looked up and saw nothing at first. Slowly, the fletchings of a volley of arrows blotted out the sky. I stared in horror, continuing to run but unable to act in unison with my comrades. Falkir saved my life by pushing my shield arm up, cursing me all the while. After a second, I could feel the force of several arrows striking my shield, one of which pierced the shield near my forearm. I felt a burning pain and wetness travelling down my arm. The arrows landed all around us, some soldiers tripping on the ones that landed on the ground near them. I didn’t want to think about what would become of them. I looked to my left to see Falkir running alongside me, looking winded.
“Brace for impact!” another soldier had shouted. We were about to collide with the opposing charge. All the soldiers now lowered their shields and unsheathed their swords, and I didn’t hesitate before doing the same this time. The two walls of men clashed with the momentum of a thousand speeding boulders, causing the frontline to collapse almost immediately. Neither side wanted to stop running at the risk of being pushed to the ground and trampled by those running behind you. I kept running, shouldering aside anyone in my way. The two armies briefly mixed, and gradually, the momentum of both charges slowed as they began to engage one another, and I skidded to a stop. As the wall of soldiers around me dispersed, a scene of absolute carnage unfolded.
Horses that still lived lacked riders and galloped aimlessly throughout the battlefield. The occasional volley of arrows from above drew a choir of harmonized screams from the crowd. There was no way to tell which army had loosed the arrows that pierced our men and the enemy’s alike. Above all, the clashing of blades loomed largest. Slashing, piercing, crushing, striking, screaming, dying. Everywhere I looked, scared young men killed other scared young men. There wasn’t a man fighting who wasn’t caked in dirt and blood. We existed in our own realm of war and death.
I lost Falkir in the chaos of the churning crowd but quickly spotted him. We made eye contact, but his eyes widened. He looked past me and shouted.
I turned quickly to face a man who was mid-swing, aiming an axe at my face. He caught me by surprise, but I was faster—I raised my shield to answer the swing. The axe the soldier had swung caught my shield hard, and the force of the strike reverberated through the shield and up my arm, causing me to almost drop it. I held on tight and realized his axe was stuck. I took advantage by shoving the shield towards him, hitting him with the blunt end of the axe. He was stunned for a second—a second too long. I raised my sword and ran it straight through the opening in his armour between his chest and helmet. He made an awful gurgling sound and fell limp, almost dragging me down with him as he fell. He weakly raised his arm as if to grab me, but his strength failed him, causing him to drop his arm uselessly on the ground. Exhausted, I stared into his eyes as his lifeblood seeped out of his throat and coated my blade. I didn’t see hate, anger, or even sadness as he took his last struggling breaths.
I only saw fear. Fear of a man who didn’t belong here.
Pinning his body to the ground with my boot, I pulled the sword out. I stared at the corpse for a moment and was horrified to realize that I felt nothing. His axe still stuck to my shield, which made quite an adornment alongside the spattering of arrows. Still, I couldn’t afford the distraction of trying to pull any of it out. The men around me fought ceaselessly, and the sky continued to belch a horde of arrows down on us. Occasionally, a blowing horn would go off, indicating some semblance of strategy and tactics being employed, even in the heat of battle.
I searched quickly for Falkir in the crowd again and spotted him fighting with a squad of men, all with their backs turned towards one another, braving external threats from every direction. I moved cautiously—shield upraised, sword shakingly held out point-first in front of me—towards him. Once he spotted me, his eyes widened in recognition. He beckoned me forward quickly and muttered something to his comrades. Speeding up, I joined his group as it expanded to make way for one more.
“Do exactly as I say, and we just might get out of this alive!” Falkir shouted at me over the din of the battle.
Like that, we fought from dawn till dusk. With Falkir’s instructions buttressing our every movement, we endured this living hell.
∴
The bodies sizzled as they burned in heaps, and I couldn’t tear my eyes off the grisly sight. I couldn’t even tell which were my former comrades and which were the enemy. Stripped of our uniforms, we all looked the same. It was twilight now, the landscape illuminated by dots of bright orange light here and there, each one a burning pile of corpses. Between them, our men walked, some in groups and most alone.
We had won. I didn’t feel like it, but I was relatively unharmed. My most significant pain had been the arrow that pierced my forearm through my shield. Even now, the wound protested at me angrily.
I heard footsteps from my right, and I turned to look. Falkir was walking towards me, looking more tired than ever. He stood with me next to the fire in silence for a short moment.
“It’s over, lad,” he said. He turned to look at me, searching my face as if looking for something in my expression. His features suddenly softened, and he nodded to himself.
“There it is,” he said. “There it is.”
He patted my shoulder as he continued walking past me. What had he seen? My gaze followed him for a while but eventually settled on the horizon.
The sun had fully set, leaving the fire as my only light.
Alexander Vishegorodskiy is a first-year student in the Bachelor of Creative and Professional Writing program at Humber College. He aspires to be a fantasy and sci-fi novelist and professional writer; this is his first published work.
Image: Bifocal (Cameo Venchiarutti)
Edited for publication by Ariesha Mais, as part of the Bachelor of Creative & Professional Writing program.
HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation.