The Duchess

A/N:

Huge, and I mean HUGE thank you to the wonderful @mintwithchoco and Woolly for hosting this prompt. I was super hesitant to join at first, but am immensely glad that I did. This was a real challenge for me, so I hope I lived up to the evocative moodboard they supplied. Without further ado, please enjoy!

The dirt felt different today.

For one, it was wet. You were used to the coarse, dry stuff you dug up acres of in the morning. You were used to the sun blazing on you, perpetually caking it to your skin.

But the grey clouds made everything dreary. And it was raining, because of course it was.

The field you walked across would’ve made good farm land. Hell, if you just imagined it, the bodies marching alongside you, stretching as far forward as you could see could be crops, swaying in the wind. If everything wasn’t so gray.

You turned to your right, finding a teenage boy. So young, you thought. His quick, nervous strides did little to stop him from falling behind. His wispy hair looked worse in the rain, beads of water running down his thin bangs.

”Hey?”

He jumped at your words, tensing up, glancing at you quickly, before looking away.

“Do you know where we’re going?” You asked.

He looked away. Of course he didn’t know, out of the thousands marching in line, this kid would be the last to know. You knew that, but the silence was too much to deal with. You hated it. You had to say something.

The people around you seemed to find your voice personally offensive. Most kept marching, heads straight, but you could’ve sworn you heard a scoff.

A grizzled old voice came from your left.

”First battle kid?”

You turned to find a bear. Not a real one, but he may as well have been. Biceps as thick as oaks and scars you assumed only those older than 40 could have accumulated, the old man eyed you with embarrassment and just a touch of warmth.

”So we are going to battle?” You asked.

”Hmph. What did you think that was for?” He muttered, pointing down to your hip.

You’d almost forgotten about the shortsword you’d been given as you were dragged from your farm, told that by order of Duchess Minnie, you’d meet at the fields to march out. Maybe because the weight at your hip felt comfortable. It wasn’t much different than the hoe you carried at your side while walking the farm.

”Word of advice. Keep to yourself. Best not to talk to anyone”. His voice was blank, deep and boring like the gray stubble that lined his face.

You kept talking to him, and he didn’t keep to himself. His boring voice and uninterested answers became comfortable, some sort of confirmation that you hadn’t merged into some gray army of Duchess Minnie’s. An impassive anchor to stop yourself from thinking of the upcoming battle.

”You look strong. Don’t get distracted. Focus on who’s in front of you, not around you, not your comrades. Stay focused and you might just make it through. Remember, there is no camaraderie in Minnie’s duchy.” He’d say, staring straight out, strides perfect. His camaraderie helped.

———————————————————————————————————

The battle started slower than you expected. You saw the approaching army from miles away. I don’t even know who we’re fighting, you thought. You almost swore you saw the old grizzled man side eye you as you thought of this army as a we. That’s right, I don’t even know who I’m fighting.

Wispy hair beside you grew increasingly twitchy as you neared the opposing army, glancing around and eliciting scared moans before the tears started.

There was no grace in the way the two armies crashed. You could see the confrontation of the two armies from where you were, hear the distant echoes of metal vibrating against itself. The screams, though. Those didn’t seem far away. And yet you advanced, ever forward, ever marching.

Wispy hair had collapsed in a puddle of mud, screaming, begging to be allowed to turn back. Two officers, you guessed they were, came and picked him up by his arms, dragging him closer to battle. Nobody turned to look.

You saw in the distance men march and fall. Was this how battles were supposed to go? Were armies supposed to stand in a line and push until one ran out of cannon fodder? Like the waves on the old lake back home? Crashing and crashing until the wind went silent and the water went still? No, that was too beautiful to describe this. This was different.

But why were you so calm? Or maybe calm wasn’t the right word. You could feel every ounce of you trembling. You blinked too fast, left your mouth open slightly so you didn’t have to breathe through just your nose. Maybe stoic was the right word, because despite all this, you marched, head up, closer to battle. But who were you being stoic for? Some Duchess? Maybe wispy hair had it right.

No, if you were going to go out, you’d at least have control over yourself. You’d already been forced to fight, so if you were to die, you’d die on your own terms. One day this field could be a farm, your dead body could decompose in its soil. What was that your father would say? “Be one with the soil”, or something like that?

It turned out you were wrong about the waves. By the time the fourth row of the armies met, all hell had broken loose. The field was a calamity of swords and spears, reddened from their victims. The lines had broken, and now, you were in the middle of it. You gripped your sword tightly, knuckles white from how you grasped it. Spear tips were lodged into soldiers in the dirt, handles sticking up as if the bodies were reaching up to the heavens, trying to get away from their place of fall, to somewhere more comfortable. Swords lay chipped on the ground, discarded in the fray of the battle or dropped in moments of death you couldn’t guess. A clang of metal to your right jolted you back to your senses

Where the fuck do I look, you thought, turning towards the sound. All around you was a mess of ally and enemy, you no longer recognized which way you came from, no longer knew which way was home. The rain came down in sheets now, further disorienting the battlefield.

And the thunder had started, because of course it did.

A streak of lightning painted the sky, illuminating the battlefield in its sharp blue light, the thunder lagging behind like it couldn’t keep up. That’s when you saw the sleek silver of a sword, rain and blood running down it alike. Its owner raised it up, locking eyes on you. An enemy.

You took an instinctual step back, foot squelching in the wet, sinking mud. You tried moving, but it was too late. Your attacker had run the 10 meters between you in a second, raising his sword high for attack.

*Clang*

You raised your defenses, sword horizontal above your head, but the attacker’s strength pushed you deeper in the mud. You tried backing up, but your foot was too deep. You were stuck in the mud.

Your attacker loaded his sword at his side, preparing to cut you down, and with an arc of his sword, he swiped at your neck. You were too late in your defense. It was all you could do to bring an upward swipe to the attack, redirecting its trajectory. But the vibration of metal on metal proved too much. Your sword slipped, thrown to the side as it saved your neck.

You had nothing now, nothing to defend yourself from the onslaught. Soon you’d just be another body lying lifeless on the ground.

No, you thought. No you weren’t going to give up. You were going to die fighting. Your attacker was shaken too from the last clash. You had bought yourself a moment.

Squatting down, you grabbed a handful of the mud keeping your foot in place. You threw it up to the now recovered man’s face.

The mud landed true, right where you wanted it. The wet mud clung to his face, covering his eyes.

You acted without thinking, your now free foot stepping into his guard, both hands clasping his flailing sword hand. You pulled, but your tugs proved useless. The sword stayed firmly in his grasp.

You brought a foot up to his torso, using it for leverage as you yanked his weapon from his hands, simultaneously kicking him to the floor. The adrenaline spurred you forward, heavy breaths pushing rain water off your lips in splashes of spittle.

Though a blur, these next moments you’d remember for the rest of your life. You were on a battlefield, in some war, and he attacked you first. You’d been justified in driving the sword through his writhing chest as he scrambled on the floor. You’d been justified in pushing it deeper, in swiping his pleading arms away as he raised them up in defense.

But had you been justified in driving the sword till its hilt was flush with his chest? Holding it there till his eyes popped, and blood gurgled out of his mouth? In stepping on his chest, and yanking the sword back once he went still?

No, as you looked at him laying still on the floor, there was nothing that could justify this. You saw the dirt caked to his skin, the sun spots on his face, the grime between his fingernails. He was a farmer just like you. Maybe sent here against his will. And you killed him. The blame lay solely on you, and the Duchess that forced you to be there.

A violent push catapulted you about 4 feet to your left. You turned, ass landing softly in the wet mud to see the grizzled old man from the march in your place, arm outstretched from having just pushed you. In front of him, an enemy prepared to attack. Had he not pushed you, you would’ve been an easy target. The grizzled man held a sword in his other hand, and with 3 strokes, efficient and swift, he dismantled the attacker. The body fell to the ground in a slump.

The grizzled man turned towards you, a smile on his face riddled with adrenaline. “I thought I told you to focus on what’s in fron-”

“NOO!”, you screamed, but it was too late. You could still see the lines of his smile as the arrow pierced his neck. By the time the arrow emerged on the other side with a spray of red, his eyes had gone slack, his body limp, the ghost of his smile falling with the rest of his body.

You watched as his body fell. You could no longer hear the claps of thunder or the screams of battle. Could no longer feel the cold drops of rain hit your head in odd rhythms. You didn’t even register when a streak of lightning tore open the sky as if parting it so another soul could slip through. The one thing that kept you even a little bit calm on the way here had departed in a quick swish of an arrow just as fast as the lightning.